“It would be particularly hard to bear for all of us”, Angela Merkel said in a press conference on Tuesday morning, “if it was confirmed that someone who had sought protection and asylum in Germany had carried out this deed”. Likely one of the hardest press appearances of her career, a visibly affected German chancellor responded to the events of 19 December, when a lorry ploughed through one of the capital’s most visited Christmas markets – in the shadow of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, a key symbol of the destructiveness of war.
So far, political and media responses in Germany have been measured. In an interview shortly before midnight on Monday, Germany’s Home Secretary Thomas de Maizière specifically warned of the “psychological effects” of any terminology employed – refusing at the time to call it a terrorist attack. Twelve hours later, it fell to the Chancellor to do so. The man detained by police last night has denied involvement, and German authorities are currently unsure if he is the perpetrator of the attack. He was captured in a park after reportedly fleeing the scene and was named in German media reports as Naved Baluch, a 23-year-old asylum seeker of Pakistani origin.
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