German daily Bild on Friday quoted a 22-year-old Italian woman called Jessica as saying that Anis Amri, the Tunisian behind the December terrorist attack on a Berlin Christmas market in which 12 people died, lived at her home near Rome for a spell.
Amri was killed by police in northern Italy later in December. He was identified on the basis of his appearance and fingerprints after being shot dead when he opened fire on police during an ordinary road stop-check.
The newspaper said Jessica’s husband, also a Tunisian who is in jail for a drugs conviction, met Amri at a Lampedusa refugee camp in 2011.
Jessica said that she had recognized Amri on TV and “began shaking all over” when she saw his face.
Police searched Jessica’s home the day after Amri was killed.
The young woman told Bild that Amri had never said anything about the Islamic State (ISIS) to her other than that “it has nothing to do with the Quran”.
“However,” she added, “I saw that he had friends on Facebook that used the ISIS flag as profile picture”.
He always used to say that “an atomic bomb should be dropped on Israel”, she said. A few weeks after he arrived in the summer of 2015, Amri moved to Germany.
“He said that he had a job prospect,” she said, adding that she had last seen him once with her husband, who has been in jail since the summer of 2016.
ANSA
