Lorry crashes into Berlin Christmas Market

So Merkel exhorting all that want to come to Germany, come and Europe's Open Borders policy played no part? Really? On which planet would that be, pray tell, certainly not the one that most of us inhabit. Blair and, albeit to a lesser extent, Cameron certainly bear some responsibility as does the Wahhabi-ist House of Saud and the Obama, Bush Junior and Bush Senior presidencies. The problem is, we as a society are not prepared to arrest and try those who are truly responsible but instead kow-tow to them (in the case of the Saudis), or revere them and grant them free passes through their sordid little lives.

Borders indeed play a big part, just stated on SKY news that the chap took three trains and crossed two borders to get from Berlin to Milan.

Of course the Schengen Open Borders policy played a big part as did the Germans' misguided (in my view) rather extreme privacy laws.

Over the last year, there have been terrorist attacks in France, Belgium and Germany. In every case, the terrorists concerned were living in the country they attacked and they made full use of their ability to cross national frontiers unchallenged.

The French, Belgian and German Police forces knew about the terrorists but failed to keep tabs on them. Which is rather ironic when you recall that the Remain Campaign preached that our security relies on reliable intelligence provided by the Police and security services of continental Europe.

While we are on the subject of terrorist could you please pop down to your local airport and see what's going on there?

I think we would all agree that we are not going to completely stamp out the terrorist attacks as seen over the last couple of years in France, Belgium and Germany but what we can do is make it more difficult for them, and borders are one of the things that could help in the fight.

I look at it like this, surrounding markets and pedestrianized areas in large cities with ballads is in itself a way of defending against similar attacks, it could become law that these kind of defences have to be erected.

There is no barrier like a physical barrier.

The hijacking in Malta has ended peacefully, probably a couple of economical migrants responsible who didn't fancy getting their feet wet and took the plane instead

Luqa, my "local" airport, happens to be on another island! But I do know that some women and children have been allowed to disembark and that the airport re-opened about an hour ago. Around 6 or 7 inbound flights from the UK and elsewhere in Europe were diverted to Catania (Sicily) but have now arrived or are en route to Malta. The hijackers have surrendered to the Maltese armed forces.

Indeed. And that is how he came to be caught. Because he was at a station in Milan.

I'm not particularly in favour of having open borders by the way. I am just looking at what occurred here rather than preaching my own politics.

Pprune suggests that the hijacker was wanting the release of Gaddafi's son. Seems that, fortunately, he didn't want it that badly...

I suggest that the presence of twenty or so burly blokes wearing balaclavas and body armour, armed to the teeth and arriving on scene in armoured vehicles may have induced (metaphorical) brown stains in the hijackers' nether regions. Malta's Protection Force is SAS-trained and not to be messed with!

Coincidentally a studio is currently shooting "Entebbe" - about the 1976 hijacking and subsequent hostage rescue operation by Israeli commandos in the Ugandan capiutal - at the airport. The shoot was interrupted by the real life hijack in the here and now. There were, therefore, many more uniformed "soldiers" on the apron and taxiways than there would otherwise have been!