Gun used by Berlin attacker imported to Switzerland in 1990s

BERLIN – The gun used by Berlin attacker Anis Amri was imported to Switzerland in the early 1990s, but it remains unclear what then happened to the weapon, Swiss authorities said Wednesday.

Investigators are still trying to figure out how Amri got hold of the .22-calibre handgun made by German manufacturer Erma, which went bankrupt in the late 1990s.

The weapon was used to fatally shoot the Polish driver of the truck Amri drove into a Christmas market, one of 12 people killed in the Dec. 19 attack. On Dec. 23, Amri shot in the shoulder one of two Italian policemen who had stopped him for an identity check near Milan. Amri was killed in the subsequent shootout.

Amri, a Tunisian, arrived in Germany in July 2015. He previously served 3 1/2 years in prison in Italy, and his mother has said that he went from Italy to Switzerland and then to Germany.

Swiss federal police said that investigations so far have turned up “no concrete indications of connections of the attacker to people or institutions in Switzerland.”

They did say, however, that German authorities had asked them to check the weapon and it turns out to have been imported legally to Switzerland in the early 1990s.

Police didn’t specify who imported it, but said that is the only trace so far of the gun in Switzerland.

It doesn’t appear in the weapons registers of Switzerland’s cantons (states) and police said there was no national weapons law at the time. They said they don’t know what happened to the gun next.