A Saudi national alleged to have carried out a deadly attack on a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, which killed five and injured more than 200, had warned on social media that “something big will happen”.
The 50-year-old doctor is in police custody after a black BMW SUV ploughed 400 metres through a crowded market at speed, driving over some people and flinging others up into the air. A nine-year-old girl is among the dead.
There are 41 people in a critical condition with life-threatening injuries and the injured are being treated at 15 clinics around the country.
Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, who came to Germany in 2006 and applied for asylum a decade later, was apprehended by armed police in a dramatic altercation as shocked bystanders looked on just minutes after the attack. He was repeatedly told to “lie on the ground” adjacent to the battered BMW that moments before had mown scores of people to the ground.
Forensic scientists are investigating the possibility that Abdulmohsen had deliberately turned off the emergency braking mechanism on the BMW X3, which he had hired before the attack, in order to maximise its impact.
At a press conference held by police and prosecutors on Saturday evening, officials said initial questioning of Abdulmohsen, who has been charged with five murders and 200 attempted murders, had taken place, but declined to reveal anything the suspect had said. However, when asked about his motivation, the chief state prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens said: “It could be he was dissatisfied with the way in which Saudi Arabian refugees were dealt with in Magdeburg.”
Nopens said the attacker had bypassed security bollards and made use of a corridor for emergency service vehicles to be able to enter the market, which should have been blocked for anything other than ambulances and police vehicles.
Amid questions as to whether the attacker could have been stopped, Nopens added: “We didn’t have the perpetrator in our focus.”
Among the many threats of violence reportedly made on social media by Abdulmohsen, a self-declared critic of Islam and defender of Saudi women, was the wish to kill former chancellor Angela Merkel for her attempts to “Islamise Europe” by allowing refugees into the country in large numbers in 2015.
He had accused German authorities of trying to censor him. He said he had been isolated by friends and family after officially announcing he had renounced his Muslim faith. Patients – often asylum seekers – at the clinic 15km south of Magdeburg, where he worked as a consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist, had accused him of being a “bad person” for doing so, he said.
Saudi authorities have told German media they warned German authorities more than once that he posed a threat. It is unclear if the warnings were acted upon.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who visited the scene of the attack on Saturday accompanied by members of his government and the leader of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, described the attack as “terrible and insane”.
After laying a white rose at the market, on the lane between wooden stalls down which the BMW had barrelled, Scholz said the choice of a Christmas market for an attack was particularly shocking, as was the timing.
It was almost eight years to the day since an Islamist terrorist had slammed a stolen lorry at speed into a Christmas market on Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz, killing 12 and injuring many more.
“There is no place more peaceful and joyful than a Christmas market,” Scholz said. “People come together for a few days before Christmas … to be together in contemplation but also to celebrate. To drink a glühwein, to eat a bratwurst. What a terrible act it is to injure and kill so many people there with such brutality.”
He cited the “almost 40” victims who had been injured “so seriously that we have to be very worried about them”.
Eyewitnesses described watching in horror as the car careered into the market at high speed about 7pm local time on Friday night, despite the hefty bollards erected around the square, which were disguised as giant colourful lego bricks. These have become customary across Germany following the Breitscheidplatz attack.
One woman said it appeared that the driver of the car, which headed towards the town hall, seemed to have specifically aimed at a fairytale-themed section of the market, where a large number of families with young children were gathered.
Terrorist experts expressed their astonishment at the nature of the attack, which lasted two to three minutes.Peter Neumann from King’s College London, a veteran terrorist expert, wrote on X: “After 25 years in this business, you think nothing could surprise you any more.
“But a 50-year-old Saudi ex-Muslim who lives in East Germany, loves the AfD and wants to punish Germany for its tolerance towards Islamists – that really wasn’t on my radar.”
Abdulmohsen had created a website to assist opponents of the regime in Saudi Arabia, in particular women, to escape the country and apply for asylum in Europe.
He had made considerable efforts to be taken seriously as a militant critic of Islam, describing himself in a 2019 interview in the august Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as “the most aggressive critic of Islam in history”.
He also demonstrated considerable support for the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the anti-Islam, anti-immigrant party that is currently second in the polls.
His attention in recent months appeared to have turned to criticism of German authorities and a bias he thought they had against Saudis such as himself and female asylum seekers in particular who had renounced Islam.
In August, in one post, he reportedly wrote: “If Germany wants to kill us, we’ll massacre them, die, or go with pride to prison.”
The attack, one of the worst terrorist offences in the country’s history, comes at a critical moment for Germany. The country is in the thick of an election campaign after the collapse of Scholz’s three-way coalition last month over differences in how to deal with myriad challenges including a deep economic downturn, and profound differences over how to tackle immigration.
Across Germany, security was yet again tightened at many of the thousands of Christmas markets that are a feature of most towns and cities from the end of November until the end of December. Some markets closed amid safety concerns.
Magdeburg’s market will remain closed. Most of the lights in the city’s centre had been turned off, and a funfair close to the market was shut. But the chimes of a church clock continued to ring out with the melody of a favourite German Christmas carol, Fröhliche Weihnacht Überall (Merry Christmas Everywhere), a plaintive reminder of the celebrations that Magdeburgers had been preparing for just hours before, which were now shattered.
One city official said: “Christmas is over in Magdeburg.”
Interior minister Nancy Faeser had warned before the opening of the Christmas market season at the end of November of the potential danger of them becoming the focus of terrorist attacks, as has been the case for several years, but said there was no concrete evidence of attacks being planned. She warned visitors to the markets to remain alert to danger.