Drove into a crowd at a Christmas market in Germany: what is known about the suspect in the attack
Kyiv • UNN
In Magdeburg, a BMW car drove into a crowd at a Christmas market, killing 5 people and injuring more than 200. The attacker is a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia who had previously made threats on social media.
A Saudi citizen who allegedly drove into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, killing five people and injuring more than 200, warned on social media that “something big is going to happen.” UNN reports this with reference to The Guardian.
Details
A 50-year-old doctor is in police custody after a black BMW SUV plowed 400 meters through a crowded market, running over several people and throwing others into the air. A nine-year-old girl was among the dead.
41 people are in critical condition with life-threatening injuries, and the wounded are being treated in 15 clinics across the country.
Taleb Al Abdul Mohsen, who came to Germany in 2006 and applied for asylum a decade later, was detained by police only minutes after the attack. Forensic investigators are looking into the possibility that Abdul Mohsen deliberately disabled the emergency braking mechanism on the BMW X3 he rented before the attack to maximize the impact.
At a press conference held by police and prosecutors on Saturday evening, officials said that the initial interrogation of Abdul Mohsen, accused of five murders and 200 attempted murders, had taken place, but declined to say what the suspect had said. However, when asked about his motives, Chief State Prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens said: “Perhaps he was unhappy with the way refugees from Saudi Arabia are treated in Magdeburg.
Nopens said the attacker bypassed security barriers and used the emergency vehicle corridor to get into the market, which was supposed to be blocked off to all but ambulances and police. Asked if the attacker could have been stopped, Nopens added: “There was no perpetrator in our line of sight.
Among the many threats of violence that Abdul Mohsen, a self-proclaimed critic of Islam and defender of Saudi women, allegedly made on social media was a desire to kill former Chancellor Angela Merkel because of her attempts to “Islamize Europe” by allowing large numbers of refugees into the country in 2015.
He accused the German authorities of trying to censor him. He said that after officially announcing his renunciation of his Muslim faith, he found himself isolated from friends and family. Patients - often asylum seekers - at the clinic 15 km south of Magdeburg, where he worked as a consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist, accused him of being a “bad person.”
Saudi authorities told German media that they had repeatedly warned German authorities that he posed a threat. It is unclear whether these warnings have been acted upon.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who visited the site of the attack on Saturday, called the attack “horrific and insane.” Laying a white rose at the market, on the path between the wooden stalls where the BMW plowed into, Scholz said the choice of a Christmas market for the attack was particularly shocking, as was the timing. He mentioned the “almost 40” victims who sustained injuries “so serious that we have to be very concerned about them.
As noted, Taleb Al Abdul Mohsen has created a website that helps opponents of the regime in Saudi Arabia, including women, to flee the country and seek asylum in Europe.
He has made great efforts to be taken seriously as a militant critic of Islam, calling himself “the most aggressive critic of Islam in history” in an interview published in 2019 in the authoritative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
He also showed significant support for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), an anti-Islam and anti-immigrant party that is currently ranked second in the polls.
In recent months, his attention seems to have shifted to criticizing the German authorities and their biased, in his view, attitude toward Saudis like himself, and in particular toward women who seek asylum and have renounced Islam.
In August, he wrote in one of his posts: “If Germany wants to kill us, we will deal with them, die or go to prison with pride.
Across Germany, security measures were again tightened at thousands of Christmas markets. Some markets were closed for security reasons.
