The German government has pledged to investigate whether the Christmas market car attack that killed five people and injured 200 could have been prevented, after it emerged authorities had received multiple warnings about the suspect.
Amid growing criticism of the German security apparatus, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Sunday that the heads of domestic and foreign intelligence services would be questioned by two parliamentary committees next week.
The man detained at the scene of Friday’s attack in Magdeburg, a psychiatrist of Saudi origin whom the German media calls Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, 50, had threatened to kill German citizens online and has a history of disputes with state authorities.
He called himself a “Saudi atheist” and helped women flee Gulf countries. He had harshly criticized Berlin for allowing in too many Muslim refugees and had repeatedly endorsed far-right conspiracy theories about the “Islamization” of Europe.
Abdulmohsen expressed his support on the social media platform .
The victims were identified as four women aged 52, 45, 75 and 67 and a nine-year-old boy whom his mother named André Gleißner on Sunday.
“May my teddy bear fly around the world again,” said Désirée Gleißner on Facebook. “André didn’t do anything to anyone. He was only with us nine years. Because? Because? You will always live in our hearts… I promise you that.”
Faeser said Sunday that the task was to “paint the portrait” of a suspect “who does not fit into any existing mold.” He had acted in an “incredibly cruel and brutal manner, like an Islamist terrorist, even though he was clearly ideologically hostile to Islam,” he said.
The Minister of the Interior promised the newspaper Bild that “no stone will be left unturned,” and added that the authorities “will clarify all this information. They will also examine in detail what information was available in the past and how it was tracked.”
The head of the federal criminal police, Holger Münch, told public broadcaster ZDF that his office received a tip from Saudi Arabia in November 2023 that led authorities to launch “investigative measures.”
Abdulmohsen had “published a large number of messages on the Internet,” Münch said, and “had maintained contacts with various authorities, uttering insults and even threats.” However, “there was no evidence that he had committed acts of violence.”
Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees said it received a tip about the suspect last summer. “It was taken seriously, like any other of the numerous leads,” he declared, adding that he had passed the information on to the relevant authorities.
Der Spiegel magazine said the Saudi secret service last year alerted the German spy agency BND to a message in which Abdulmohsen threatened Germany with “paying a price” for its treatment of Saudi refugees.
Police said on Sunday that Abdulmohsen, who arrived in Germany in 2006 and had permanent residency, had been remanded in custody late Saturday night after prosecutors brought charges of murder, attempted murder and serious injury. .
The three-minute attack, in which a rented dark-colored BMW SUV sped through the crowded market shortly after 7 p.m. on Friday, injured 205 people, 41 of whom remained in serious or serious condition. critical on Sunday.
As thousands mourned the victims in Magdeburg on Saturday night, clashes broke out at a far-right rally in the city, billed as a “demonstration against terror” and attended by more than 2,000 people, media reported. local communications.
The protesters, dressed in black balaclavas, chanted “immigration kills” and held up a large banner with the word “remigration,” a term popular among anti-immigration ultras who seek the mass deportation of immigrants and people considered non-ethnically German.
A sea of flowers spread in front of the Church of St. John of Magdeburg, near the crime scene, which attracted a constant stream of tearful mourners throughout the weekend, many of whom returned more than once, police reported. local media.
Abdulmohsen has described himself as a former Muslim and was an active user of
In August he wrote on social media: “Is there a path to justice in Germany without blowing up a German embassy or massacring random German citizens? …If anyone knows, please tell me.” He also posted on X that he wanted former German Chancellor Angela Merkel to be imprisoned for life or executed.
Already in 2013 he was fined by a Rostock city court for “disturbing public peace by threatening to commit crimes.” This year he was investigated in Berlin for “misuse of emergency calls” after getting into a heated argument with officers at a police station, local media reported. Since October he had been on sick leave from his workplace, an addiction clinic near Magdeburg.
Mina Ahadi, president of an association of ex-Muslims in Germany, declared that Abdulmohsen “was not a stranger to us, because he has been terrorizing us for years.” He described him as a “psychopath adept at far-right conspiratorial ideologies.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday condemned the “terrible and insane” attack and called for national unity, amid the growing political tension in the country on the eve of the federal elections on February 23.
The opposition parties were quick to criticize his Government. The parliamentary leader of the anti-immigration AfD, Bernd Baumann, demanded that Scholz call an extraordinary session of the Bundestag on the “desperate” security situation.
The AfD has strong support in the former East Germany, where Magdeburg is located, and is second nationally in polls. Its leading members, including its chancellor candidate, Alice Weidel, were scheduled to hold a rally in Magdeburg on Monday night.
Andrea Lindholz of the center-right Christian Social Union, which like the CDU/CSU alliance is leading in the polls, said the attack “raises questions about the authorities’ awareness of the warnings coming from home and abroad. These questions must be answered.”
The head of the left-wing BSW party, Sahra Wagenknecht, said: “The background needs to be clarified. But above all, we must do more to prevent this type of crime, especially given that obviously in this case there were specific warnings and advice that were ignored.”
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