Visitors pause at a makeshift memorial at the reopened Breitscheidplatz Christmas market only a short distance from where three days ago a truck plowed into the market, killed 12 people and injured dozens in a terrorist attack on December 22, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)(BERLIN) — The brothers of the suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack said they were “shocked” at the carnage and said he “doesn’t represent us or our family,” according to new interviews.
Police have released the name of Anis Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian, who they believe is responsible for driving a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people and wounding dozens.
“Just like all the Tunisian people we were shocked,” Amri’s brother Walid Amri told Sky Arabia. “In the beginning I didn’t imagine it was my brother Anis. We were shocked just as we were when the terrorist attacks happened in Tunisia and France. No human being wishes for something like this to happen.”
Walid Amri added that his brother “never told us about his life or who he was as a person.”
“When he left Tunisia he was a normal person. He drank alcohol and didn’t even pray. He had no religious beliefs. My dad, my brother and I all used to pray and he didn’t, maybe he got into this when he was in prison,” Walid Amri said, according to the interview. Amri served time in an Italian prison for arson.
His other brother Abdelkader Amri said that Anis “doesn’t represent us or our family.”
“If he is watching now I just want to say may God guide you for putting us in this situation,” Abdelkader Amri said, according to Sky Arabia. “Your father and mother are crying, people have left their jobs to come and see us. You have caused so much chaos. What can I say?”
“He went into prison with a mentality and when he came out he had a total different mentality. We always had our differences and didn’t agree on much,” Abdelkader Amri said.
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