Germany's Magdeburg Christmas Market Striker: What We Know So Far | Crime news

Five people, including a nine-year-old boy, died when a man drove a car into a crowded Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, on December 20.

More than 200 people were injured in the attack on Friday night, including about 40 people who suffered serious or critical injuries.

On Tuesday, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier used his traditional Christmas address to the nation to call for national unity.

He said: “There is a dark shadow hanging over this Christmas.”

“Hate and violence should not have the last word. Let us not let them divide us. Let's be together.”

Authorities said the suspect used emergency exit routes to get to the Christmas market site, where he weaved through the crowd during a three-minute rampage. The man surrendered himself to the police on the spot.

The Magdeburg Police Department said in a statement on Sunday that the suspect was placed in pre-trial detention on suspicion of five counts of murder and multiple counts of attempted murder and grievous bodily harm.

Here's what we know about the suspect:

Who is the suspect?

The suspect has been identified as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old psychiatrist from Saudi Arabia who has lived in Germany for almost two decades.

He works at a clinic specializing in the treatment of offenders with addictions, but has been on sick leave since the end of October.

He describes himself as a “Saudi atheist” and an activist critical of Islam who has helped ex-Muslims flee the Gulf states.

Al-Abdulmohsen is active online, criticizing Germany for accepting too many Muslim refugees and supporting far-right conspiracy theories about the “Islamization” of Europe.

News magazine Der Spiegel reported that Al Abdulmohsen was a supporter of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Mina Ahadi, chairman of the German Central Council of Ex-Muslims, told German daily Tageszeitung that the suspect was known to the council and had tried to send a donation about eight years ago.

She recalled his behavior as “aggressive” and said she felt like she was “dealing with a mentally ill person.”

Ahadi wrote to X on Saturday that al-Abdulmohsen had been “terrorizing” the council for several years.

“His delusional ideas went so far that he suggested that even organizations critical of Islam were part of the Islamist conspiracy,” she said.

What did the authorities say?

German Interior Minister Nancy Feiser told reporters on Saturday: “At this stage, the only thing we can say for sure is that the perpetrator was clearly Islamophobic. We can now confirm this. Everything else is subject to further investigation.”

On Sunday, she said the attacker “doesn't fit any previous pattern” because “he acted as an Islamist terrorist, even though ideologically he was clearly an enemy of Islam.”

Parliamentary committee hearings on the attack will be held on December 30, in which Feiser and the heads of Germany's domestic and foreign intelligence services will answer questions, a senior lawmaker told AFP.

What was the suspect's motive?

Magdeburg prosecutor Horst Knopens said on Saturday that one contributing factor to the suspect's motive may be his frustration with Germany's treatment of Saudi refugees.

The suspect had issued online death threats targeting German citizens and had a record of run-ins with government authorities.

According to a report by Der Spiegel magazine, which cited security sources, the Saudi secret service alerted the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency, a year earlier about a tweet in which Al-Abdulmohsen warned that Germany would suffer consequences for its treatment of Saudi refugees.

In August, he wrote on social media: “Is there a path to justice in Germany without blowing up a German embassy or indiscriminately killing German citizens?… If anyone knows, please let me know.”

Citing security sources, Die Welt newspaper reported that German state and federal police carried out a “risk assessment” on Al-Abdulmohsen last year but concluded that he did not pose a “specific danger”.

What else is known about the suspect's motives?

Felix Neumann, policy adviser on security at Germany's Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told Al Jazeera that the incident was initially thought to be an “Islamist attack as it was very similar to the Breitscheidplatz attack in 2016”. when a truck deliberately plowed into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people.

“Looking at the comments he made online, it's now quite unlikely that this was an Islamist attack,” Neumann said.

“The perpetrator was very critical of Islam and shared right-wing extremist narratives on his X account. Further investigations will show what ultimately motivated him, but the concept of 'salad bar extremism' may apply here.”

“This means that people individually choose those aspects that are plausible to them, but there is no single, coherent ideology.”

Could the government have done more to prevent the attack?

Neumann said: “Germany is a federal system which has various advantages, but information sharing is not one of them.

“Foreign intelligence services and individuals who provided information about the potential danger to the perpetrator must now be investigated, and it must be established where there were errors in the chain of information exchange.”

“This should then be optimized so that analyzes of potential threats can be better communicated between authorities.”