By Thomas Escritt and Rachel Extra
MAGDEBURG, Germany (Reuters) -German authorities are investigating a Saudi man with a historical past of anti-Islam rhetoric because the suspected driver in a car-ramming assault at a Christmas market within the metropolis of Magdeburg which killed 5 individuals, officers stated on Saturday.
The Friday night assault on crowds of market guests gathered to have a good time the pre-Christmas season comes amid a fierce debate over safety and migration throughout an election marketing campaign in Germany, the place the far proper is polling strongly.
“What a horrible act it’s to injure and kill so many individuals there with such brutality,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated within the central metropolis, a part of the previous East Germany, the place he laid a white rose at a church in honour of the victims.
“We now have now discovered that over 200 individuals have been injured,” he added. “Virtually 40 are so critically injured that we have to be very frightened about them.”
A 50-year-old Saudi physician who has lived in Germany for nearly twenty years was arrested on the scene. Police searched his residence in a single day.
The motive remained unclear and police haven’t but named the suspect. He has been named in German media as Taleb A.
A spokesperson for a specialist rehabilitation clinic for criminals with addictions in Bernburg confirmed that the suspect had labored as a psychiatrist for them, however had not been at work since October resulting from illness and vacation depart.
Posts on his X account, verified by Reuters, indicated help for anti-Islam and far-right events, together with the Different for Germany (AfD), in addition to criticism of Germany for its dealing with of Saudi refugees.
German Inside Minister Nancy Faeser stated the suspect’s Islamophobia was clear to see, however she declined to touch upon motive.
Taleb A. appeared in a variety of media interviews in 2019, together with with German newspaper FAZ and the BBC, wherein he spoke of his work as an activist serving to Saudi Arabians and ex-Muslims flee to Europe.
“There isn’t a good Islam,” he instructed FAZ on the time.
A Saudi supply instructed Reuters that Saudi Arabia had warned German authorities in regards to the attacker after he posted extremist views on his private X account that threatened peace and safety.
These warnings got a number of occasions since he left Saudi Arabia in 2006, the supply stated, with out going into additional element.
A threat evaluation performed final 12 months by German state and federal felony investigators got here to the conclusion that the person posed “no particular hazard”, the Welt newspaper reported, citing safety sources.
Germany’s home and overseas intelligence businesses each declined to touch upon the continuing investigation.
Andrea Reis, who had been on the market on Friday, returned on Saturday along with her daughter Julia to put a candle by the church overlooking the positioning. She stated that had it not been for a matter of moments, they might have been within the automobile’s path.
“I stated, ‘let’s go and get a sausage’, however my daughter stated ‘no let’s hold strolling round’. If we might stayed the place we had been we might have been within the automobile’s path,” she stated.
Tears ran down her face as she described the scene. “Youngsters screaming, crying for mama. You’ll be able to’t neglect that,” she stated.
Scholz’s Social Democrats are trailing each the far-right AfD and the frontrunner conservative opposition in opinion polls forward of snap elections set for Feb. 23.
The AfD, which enjoys notably sturdy help within the former East, has led requires a crackdown on migration to the nation.
Its chancellor candidate Alice Weidel and co-leader Tino Chrupalla issued a press release on Saturday condemning the assault.
“The horrible assault on the Christmas market in Magdeburg in the midst of the peaceable pre-Christmas interval has shaken us,” they stated.
