German police baffled | Says suspect  an anti-Islam activist who had made online death threats against citizens

People mourn at a makeshift memorial outside the Johanniskirche (Johannes Church), near Friday’s  site of the car-ramming attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, on Saturday

Police in Germany have said a man suspected of killing at least five people and injuring hundreds after he drove a car at speed through a crowded Christmas market faces charges of murder and attempted murder. In the central town of Magdeburg, where the attack happened on Friday night, police said the suspect, named by German media as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old psychiatrist from Saudi Arabia, was remanded in custody late on Saturday night. The suspect has lived in Germany for almost two decades. The motive for the attack remained unclear. Police said on Sunday that prosecutors had pressed charges of murder and attempted murder against al-Abdulmohsen, an anti-Islam activist who had made online death threats against German citizens and had a history of disputes with state authorities.

Earlier, Reiner Haseloff, the premier of Saxony-Anhalt state, said a preliminary investigation suggested the alleged attacker was acting alone. Prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens said on Saturday that the investigation was ongoing but suggested one potential motive for the attack "could have been disgruntlement with the way Saudi Arabian refugees are treated in Germany". The suspect ran a website that aimed to help other former Muslims flee persecution in their Gulf homelands. Police have so far  found  no known links to Islamist extremism with  al-Abdulmohsen. His social media and posts appear to suggest he had been critical of Islam. While helping women flee Gulf countries and complaining in the past that Germany was not doing enough to help them, he had also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he referred to as the “Islamification of Europe”. As recently as August, al-Abdulmohsen also wrote on social media: “Is there a path to justice in Germany without blowing up a German embassy or randomly slaughtering German citizens? … If anyone knows it, please let me know”, reported the Guardian. He also posted on X that he wished Germany’s ex-chancellor, Angela Merkel, could be jailed for life or executed. In 2013, he  was fined by a court in the city of Rostock for “disturbing the public peace by threatening to commit crimes”.

This year he was investigated in Berlin for the “misuse of emergency calls” after arguing with officers at a police station, local media reported. He had been on sick leave since late October from his workplace, an addiction clinic near Magdeburg.

Mina Ahadi, the chair of an association of former Muslims in Germany, said al-Abdulmohsen was “no stranger to us, because he has been terrorising us for years”. She labelled him “a psychopath who adheres to ultra-right conspiracy ideologies”.

Issue of ‘remigration’ 

Friday evening's attack in the central city of Magdeburg shocked the country and stirred up tensions over the charged issue of immigration.  About 2,100 people attended a far-right demonstration billed as a “demonstration against terror” overnight, local media reported.

Protesters at the far-right rally wore black balaclavas and were filmed holding a large banner with the word “remigration”, a term popular with anti-immigration extremists seeking the mass deportation of migrants and people deemed not ethnically German.

The government was facing growing questions about whether more could have been done to prevent the attack, which injured 205 people, including about 40 in a critical condition.

Opposition parties on the far right and far left, however, criticised Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government. The far-right AfD’s parliamentary leader, Bernd Baumann, demanded Scholz call a special session of the Bundestag on the “desolate” security situation.