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The attack, during which a Tunisian asylum seeker, Anis Amri, drove a truck into the crowded Christmas market on December 19, 2016, was a “tragic consequence of political inaction of your government,” the victims’ relatives wrote in a letter, addressing Merkel personally. They went on to say that 12 people died because “you [Merkel] had failed to timely accumulate the necessary resources and reform the inordinate [security] structures to fight this [terrorist] threats.”

The people, some of whom did not just lost their loved ones in that attack but also sustained injuries themselves, also reproached Merkel and her government for the fact that Germany “still lacks basic professionalism in dealing with terrorism.” The letter, obtained by Germany’s Der Spiegel weekly, says that the investigation of the attack revealed numerous deficiencies in the work of the German services tasked with tackling the terrorist threats.

They particularly pointed out that the perpetrator of the attack was long known to police and had “numerous criminal records.” Moreover, the police warned the Interior Ministry that Amri could pose a terrorist threat as early as nine months before the attack. However, despite all these facts, police only monitored his actions “from time to time” and eventually failed to prevent the attack.

“German regional and federal police departments as well as some 50 other [security] services are plagued by competence chaos,” the letter says, adding specific functions of particular services are unclear while the level of information sharing between them is “absolutely insufficient.” It also urged Merkel to “correct all faults as soon as possible.”