GWADAR: Naveed Baloch — the Pakistani asylum seeker who was detained in Berlin for his suspected involvement in a deadly assault in which 12 people died early this week, and who was said to have been released late on Tuesday for lack of evidence against him — has neither contacted his family nor reached the refugee shelter in the German capital where he was living.

Naveed’s father Hassan Baloch told Dawn on Wednesday that his son had gone missing.

He said he had not been contacted by Naveed even though media reports said his son had been set free by the Berlin police on Tuesday night.

When contacted, a Baloch activist in Berlin, Wajid Baloch, confirmed that Naveed had yet to reach the refugee shelter where he was living prior to his detention.

Berlin police now mount search for Tunisian suspect

His mobile phone had been switched off, Wajid said.

He said he was in contact with the head of the refugee shelter.

Hassan said his son used to work on a daily wage basis in the local fishing industry. “Out of frustration and fed up with unemployment, my son went to Germany 17 months ago,” he said.

Hassan lives in Kech district of Balochistan.

Search mounted

German police launched a manhunt on Wednesday for a rejected asylum seeker suspected of involvement in the deadly truck assault claimed by the militant Islamic State (IS) group, AFP reported from Berlin.

Officials said that asylum office papers believed to belong to the Tunisian man with alleged links to the radical Islamists were found in the cab of the 40-tonne lorry used in the attack that killed 12 people.

“There is a new suspect we are searching for — he is a suspect but not necessarily the assailant,” Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters, saying a Europe-wide search was under way. He declined to give further details.

But his regional counterpart in North Rhine-Westphalia state, Ralf Jaeger, said the man identified as Anis A. or Ahmed A. by media had already been under investigation for planning an attack.

Counterterrorism officials had exchanged information about him, most recently in November, and a probe had been launched suspecting he was preparing “a serious act of violence against the state”, Jaeger said.

The suspect came to Germany in July 2015 but his application for asylum was rejected this June.

His deportation, however, got caught up in red tape with Tunisia, which long denied he was a citizen. The required documents only arrived on Wednesday, two days after the Berlin attack, said Jaeger.

One conservative lawmaker, Stephan Meyer, said the suspect was being watched by police.

“We are apparently talking about a potentially dangerous suspect who was known to authorities and belonged to the Salafist-Islamist scene,” he told reporters after a meeting of parliament’s interior affairs committee.

A previous suspect — a 23-year-old Pakistani asylum seeker — was released late on Tuesday for lack of evidence, prompting fears of a killer on the loose and further rattling nerves in a shocked country.

Deportation debate

Twelve people were killed when the Polish-registered articulated truck, laden with steel beams, slammed into the crowded holiday market late on Monday, smashing wooden stalls and crushing victims.

The scenes revived nightmarish memories of the July 14 truck assault in the French Riviera city of Nice, where 86 people were killed by a Tunisian Islamist.

Twenty-four people remained in hospital, 14 of whom were seriously injured, De Maiziere said.

The IS-linked Amaq news agency said “a soldier of the Islamic State” carried out the Berlin carnage “in response to appeals to target citizens of coalition countries”.

There was no evidence to back the claim.

Germany is part of a US-led coalition fighting IS in Iraq and Syria.

Tunisia is one of the biggest suppliers of militants, with some 5,500 of its nationals believed to be involved in combat in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

The attack comes at a delicate time for Chancellor Angela Merkel who is running for a fourth term in 2017 but has faced strong criticism over her decision last year to open the country’s borders to refugees.

The case inflamed the debate about asylum policy in general, and in particular the speed at which rejected asylum seekers can be deported.

Germany this year moved to declare Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia as safe countries of origin, to raise the bar for asylum requests after last year’s record influx of around 890,000 people.

But the bill has been stuck in the upper house for months over human rights concerns in those countries.

A Polish man, killed with a gunshot, was found in the truck’s passenger seat. The 37-year-old Pole named Lukasz worked for his cousin Ariel Zurawski’s transport company in northern Poland.

Published in Dawn December 22nd, 2016