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German authorities said they received tips about the suspect last year car attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg while on Sunday, more details emerged about the five people killed.
Authorities have identified the suspect as a Saudi doctor who arrived in Germany in 2006 and was granted permanent residence. Police did not publicly name the suspect, in accordance with privacy rules, but some German news outlets identified him as Taleb A. and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.
Authorities say he does not fit the usual profile of perpetrators of extremist attacks. He described himself as a former Muslim who was very critical of Islam and expressed his support for the far-right anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in many posts on social media.
He is being held in custody while the authorities investigate him.
The head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, Holger Münch, said in an interview with German television ZDF on Saturday that his office received a tip from Saudi Arabia in November 2023, prompting authorities to initiate “appropriate investigative measures.”
“The man also published a huge number of posts on the Internet. He also contacted various authorities, sent insults and even threats. However, he is not known to have committed acts of violence,” said Münch, whose office is the German equivalent of the FBI.
He said the warnings, however, turned out to be very non-specific.
The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees also said on Saturday on X that it had received a tip about the suspect in late summer last year.
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“This is taken seriously, as are any other of the numerous tips,” the office said. However, it also noted that it is not an investigative body and that it has forwarded the information to the competent authorities. He gave no other details.
The Central Council of Ex-Muslims said in a statement that the suspect had been “terrorizing” them for years as it expressed its shock at the attack.
“He apparently shared the beliefs of the far-right spectrum of the AfD and believed in a large-scale conspiracy aimed at the Islamization of Germany. “His delusions went so far that he assumed that even organizations that criticize Islam are part of an Islamist conspiracy,” the statement said.
The group’s president, Mina Ahadi, said in the same statement: “At first we suspected that he might be a mole in the Islamist movement. But now I think he’s a psychopath who adheres to far-right conspiracy ideologies.”
Police in Magdeburg, the capital of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, said on Sunday that four women aged 45, 52, 67 and 75 were killed, as well as a 9-year-old boy.
Authorities said 200 people were injured, including 41 seriously. They were treated at multiple hospitals in Magdeburg, which is about 130 kilometers (80 miles) west of Berlin, and beyond.
The suspect was brought before a judge on Saturday evening, who ordered him to be detained behind closed doors on charges of murder and attempted murder. He faces a possible indictment.
The horror of yet another act of mass violence in Germany makes it likely that migration will remain a key issue as the country moves towards snap elections on February 23. A deadly knife attack in Solingen in August pushed the issue to the top of the agenda, prompting Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government to tighten border security measures.
Right-wing activists across Europe have criticized German authorities for allowing high levels of migration in the past and for what they now see as security lapses.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has been known for his strong anti-migration stance for years, used the attack in Germany to attack the migration policy of the European Union and described it as a “terrorist act”.
At the annual press conference on Saturday in Budapest, Orbán insisted that “there is no doubt that there is a connection between the changed world in Western Europe, the migration that flows there, especially illegal migration, and acts of terrorism.”
Orbán has promised to “fight” the EU’s migration policy and claims without evidence that “Brussels wants Magdeburg to happen to Hungary.”
© 2024 The Canadian Press
