“Federal authorities are turning over every stone,” said German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
But it’s far from clear that will reassure voters, particularly as revelations about security missteps continue to surface.
Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) was warned by regional authorities of the suspect’s possible violent intentions as early as 2015, according to a report by press agency dpa. Saudi Arabian authorities also warned German security officials of the alleged attacker in 2023. Investigations were then initiated, but the case remained “unspecific,” Holger Münch, the head of the BKA, told public television.
The suspect, however, gave repeated indications of his violent intentions in online posts. “I assure you 100% that revenge will come soon. Even if it costs me my life,” he is purported to have written on X last December in a now-deleted post. “I seriously expect to die this year,” another such post reads.
The atypical profile of the suspect — a 50-year-old refugee from Saudi Arabia who styled himself as a women’s rights activist, was reported to have sympathized with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), and whom German authorities characterize as “Islamophobic”— may have predisposed authorities to overlook warning signs, experts say.
“In Germany, people think very strongly in established, rigid categories of right-wing extremist, left-wing extremist, Islamist,” said Peter Neumann, a terrorist and security expert at King’s College London, in an interview with Spiegel. “A second problem is that it has long been assumed that mental illness is by and large irrelevant in the fight against terrorism.”