Germans mourned a violent attack and loss of security on Saturday after a Saudi doctor deliberately drove a black BMW into a Christmas market packed with holiday shoppers, killing at least one person, including a small child. At least two people died and at least 60 others were injured.
Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack on Friday evening and detained him for questioning. Officials said he has been living and practicing medicine in Germany for nearly two decades.
Several German media outlets identified the man as Taleb A., hiding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was an expert in psychiatry and psychotherapy.
There were still no answers Saturday as to what prompted him to drive into a crowd in the eastern German city of Magdeburg.
Describing himself as a former Muslim, he shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily that focused on anti-Islamic themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who leave the faith.
He also accused German authorities of failing to take adequate steps to combat “Islamism of Europe”. Some described her as an activist who helped Saudi women flee their homeland. He also expressed support for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Recently, he seemed focused on his theory that German authorities are targeting Saudi asylum seekers.
Leading German terrorism expert Peter Neumann said he had not yet encountered a suspect of mass violence with that profile.
“After 25 years in this ‘business’ you think nothing can surprise you anymore. But a 50-year-old Saudi ex-Muslim living in East Germany loves the AfD and loves Germany for its tolerance towards Islamists. “It really was not on my radar,” Newman, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College London, wrote on X.
The violence shocked Germany and the city, leaving its mayor in tears and upsetting a festive event that was part of a centuries-old German tradition. This prompted several other German cities to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and in solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin, where 12 people were killed in a truck attack on a Christmas market in 2016, has kept its markets open but has increased the police presence at them.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Feser were due to travel to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service was to take place in the city’s cathedral in the evening.
“My sympathies are with the victims and their relatives. We stand with them and the people of Magdeburg,” Scholz wrote on Twitter.
Magdeburg is a city of about 240,000 people west of Berlin, which serves as the capital of Saxony-Anhalt. Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Berlin Christmas market, killing 13 people and injuring scores more. A few days later, the attacker was killed in a shootout in Italy.
Verified bystander footage distributed by German news agency DPA showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the street. A nearby police officer pointed a handgun at the man and yelled at him as he lay prone, his head tilted slightly upward. Other officers approached the suspect and took him into custody.
The two people confirmed dead are an adult and a child, but officials said additional deaths could not be ruled out as 15 people were seriously injured.
Saxony-Anhalt Governor Rainer Haseloff told reporters, “As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so as far as we know there is no further threat to the city.” “Every human life that is the victim of this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life is too many.”
Authorities have identified the suspect as a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who moved to Germany in 2006 and was practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers south of Magdeburg.
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attack on Saudi Arabia but did not mention the suspect’s ties to the kingdom.
Christmas markets are a German holiday tradition dating back to the Middle Ages, now successfully exported to much of the Western world.
Hours after Friday’s tragedy, the sound of sirens clashed with the market’s festive ornaments, stars and leafy garlands.
Magdeburg resident Doreen Stephan told dpa that she was at a concert at a nearby church when she heard sirens. The noise was so loud “you had to assume something terrible had happened,” she said, calling it “a dark day” for the city.
The attack echoed far beyond Magdeburg, with Haseloff calling it a disaster for the city, the state, and the country. He said flags in Saxony-Anhalt would be flown at half-mast and the federal government planned to do the same.
“It’s really one of the worst things that one could imagine, especially in relation to what should be a Christmas market,” the governor said.
