long, but it felt like i was in slow motion trying to get away from it. very surreal. just one of the eyewitnesses there, the asia pacific foundation joins me now in london. what is shocking is that, you know, the lack of shock really about what happened here. this is exactly the sort of attack the intelligence agencies were talking about and preparing for. very much so. i m afraid they were warning us. they were concerned that the christmas period would result in a spate of plots. there was heightened activity, electronic chatter. i guess it still is disturbing because of the fact when you see a vehicle being turned into a lethal weapon, mowing people down, everyone brings the similarity to the nice attacks on the 14th of july of this year. but there have been a number of other plots involving vehicles which thankfully the authorities have disrupted, but unfortunately they have to be lucky all the time, the terrorist needs to be lucky once, and when it happens it is
over time but she is leaving public statements to her minister of the interior who is responsible for the authorities that are investigating acts of terrorism. so the investigation continues, and they are potentially carrying out extra raise as you suggested there. but they don t think there s a wider threat, people aren t being told to stay indoors anymore? well, from what we have seen in the past is that even those people who seem self-radicalized, who seem to be what is called lone wolves in the public, always have some sort of link to a wider network, always have been in communication with a wider network, either inspiring them or leading them or instructing them. we have seen this kind of activity in germany in the past months, very concrete instructions coming out of radical, in this case islamist groups, to sympathizers here in germany. so there s is nothing that
much intelligence led. perhaps arguably there could be more measures to use barriers, heavy concrete around, say, marketplaces to stop vehicles from entering. keep in mind, there have been plots in germany to target people with weapons and also as a path. the individual who carries the tabbing on the train earlier this year, german authorities discovered his intention was actually to use a car to mow people down. the only reason it didn t happen was because he didn t have a driver s license. just recently last week a 12-year-old was arrested in germany with the intention of targeting a christmas marketplace. so there s a lot of activity going on in germany and the authorities are keeping track with intelligence, but they can t disrupt every plot. if people stop going to this events, the terrorists have won, haven t they? the goal of terrorism is to kill and maim, the second goal is to cause disruption, to change our way of life, to alter the way we think and feel about our security