German official: police missed terror suspect’s phone photo

BERLIN – German authorities say investigators somehow didn’t spot a photo of a Tunisian terrorist suspect holding a firearm when evaluating data on his cellphone, months before he killed a dozen people in a truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market.

North Rhine-Westphalia’s interior minister Herbert Reul said Monday the phone was confiscated during a police spot-check in Berlin in February, 2016, and 12,000 media files were sent to investigators in his state, where the suspect was living.

One file was a photo showing Anis Amri with a firearm. Reul called for a review of police procedures to “avoid such mistakes in the future.”

Public inquiries and German media have uncovered a series of mistakes by security agencies in tracking a man who authorities suspected posed a public threat.