Man linked to Tunis museum attack held in Germany

Wiesbaden - The Tunisian had entered Germany as an asylum seeker that August.

A Tunisian asylum-seeker arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of planning an attack in Germany was also wanted in Tunis in connection with a deadly assault on the Bardo Museum there, German officials said.
The 36-year-old is suspected of recruiting for Daesh in Germany since August 2015, and building up a network of supporters with the aim of carrying out a terrorist attack, the Frankfurt prosecutor's office said in statement.
The Tunisian had entered Germany as an asylum seeker that August, it said, five months after militant gunmen stormed the Bardo Museum and killed 21 foreign tourists. Tunisia suspects he was involved in that assault, it added.
The attack was the first major militant attack against Tunisia in the wake of the country's 2011 "Arab Spring" uprising. Three months later, gunmen targeted a beachfront hotel, shooting dead 39 people, mostly British holidaymakers.
The German newspaper Die Welt identified the Tunisian as Haikel S. and said he had been known to German security agencies as a radical Salafist for the past decade.
"The main suspect is a 36-year-old Tunisian citizen strongly suspected of working for the foreign terrorist organisation that calls itself 'Daesh' as a recruiter ... with the aim of carrying out a terrorist attack in Germany," the statement said.
Tunisia suspected him "of having been involved in planning and carrying out the attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis" and an attack last year on a border town, it added.
According to Die Welt, investigators said he had been in contact with an Daesh cell responsible for "external operations" and had planned attacks in Europe. Reuters could not immediately independently verify the report.
Frankfurt's prosecutor general said the suspect, who was arrested in Germany's financial capital, had lived in Germany between 2003 and 2013 before leaving for two years.
How a Tunisian known to the intelligence agencies could return to Germany undetected will raise further questions for Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of September's federal elections.

• MENA