Five people, including a nine-year-old child, were killed when a man hit a car with a car Busy Christmas market In Magdeburg, Germany, on December 20.
More than 200 people were injured in the attack that occurred on Friday evening, including about 40 people who were seriously or critically injured.
On Tuesday, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier used his traditional Christmas address to the nation to call for national unity.
“There is a dark shadow hanging over this Christmas,” he said.
“Hatred and violence must not have the last word. Let us not allow ourselves to be divided. Let us stand together.”
Authorities said the suspect used emergency exit routes to reach the Christmas market grounds, where he plowed into crowds during a three-minute rampage. The man surrendered himself to police at the scene.
The Magdeburg Police Department said in a statement on Sunday that the suspect was placed in investigative detention on suspicion of five counts of murder and multiple counts of attempted murder and grievous bodily harm.
Here’s what we know about the suspect:
Who is the suspect?
the suspected He has been identified as Talib Al-Abdul Mohsen, a 50-year-old psychiatrist from Saudi Arabia who has lived in Germany for nearly two decades.
He works in a clinic specializing in treating criminals with addiction problems, but he has been on sick leave since the end of October.
He described himself as a “Saudi atheist” and an activist critical of Islam who helped former Muslims flee Gulf countries.
Al-Abdul Mohsen is active online Criticism of Germany For receiving too many Muslim refugees and supporting far-right conspiracy theories about the “Islamization” of Europe.
News magazine Der Spiegel reported that Al-Abdul Mohsen was a supporter of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Mina Ahadi, head of the Central Council of Ex-Muslims in Germany, told the German daily Tageszeitung that the suspect was known to the council and that he had tried to send a donation about eight years ago.
She recalled his behavior as “aggressive” and said she felt like she was “dealing with a mentally ill person.”
Al-Ahdi wrote on the X website on Saturday that Al-Abdul Mohsen had “terrorized” the council for several years.
She added: “His delusional ideas went so far that he assumed that even organizations criticizing Islamism were part of the Islamist conspiracy.”
What did the authorities say?
“At this stage, the only thing we can say with certainty is that the perpetrator was clearly Islamophobic,” German Interior Minister Nancy Weisser told reporters on Saturday. We can already confirm that. Everything else is subject to further investigation.”
She said on Sunday that the attacker “does not fit any previous pattern” because he “behaved like an Islamic terrorist even though he is clearly an enemy of Islam ideologically.”
A senior lawmaker told Agence France-Presse that the parliamentary committee will hold hearings on December 30 on the attack, where Weisser and the heads of Germany’s domestic and foreign intelligence services will answer questions.
What is the suspect’s motive?
Magdeburg prosecutor Horst Nobbens said on Saturday that one factor contributing to the suspect’s motives may have been his frustration with Germany’s treatment of Saudi refugees.
The suspect had issued death threats online targeting German citizens and had a record of conflicts with state authorities.
According to a report in the news magazine Der Spiegel, citing security sources, Saudi intelligence alerted the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, a year ago about a tweet in which Al-Abdul Mohsen warned that Germany would face consequences for its actions. Treatment of Saudi refugees
In August, he wrote on social media: “Is there a path to justice in Germany without bombing a German embassy or randomly slaughtering German citizens?… If anyone knows, please let me know.”
The German state and federal police conducted a “risk assessment” on Al-Abdul Mohsen last year, but concluded that he did not pose a “specific risk,” Die Welt newspaper reported, citing security sources.
What else is known about the suspect’s motives?
Felix Neumann, a policy advisor on security issues at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told Al Jazeera that the incident was initially assumed to be an “Islamist attack because it was very similar to the attack on Bretzcheidplatz in 2016” when a truck deliberately drove into a Christmas market in Berlin, Which killed 13 people.
“But given the comments he made online, it is now unlikely that it was an Islamist attack,” Newman said.
“The perpetrator was highly critical of Islam and shared far-right narratives on his account
“This means that individuals individually choose those aspects that make sense to them, but there is no unified and coherent ideology.”
Could the government have done more to prevent the attack?
“Germany is a federal system, and it has various advantages, but information exchange is not one of them,” Neumann said.
“Foreign intelligence services and individuals who provided information about the potential danger of the perpetrator must now be investigated, and it must be determined where errors existed in the chain of information exchange.
“This must then be improved so that analyzes of potential threats can be better conveyed between authorities.”
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