Five people are dead and more than 200 are injured. The alleged perpetrator of the Magdeburg Christmas market massacre is a Saudi critic of Islam. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has asked not to allow hatred to prevail in the country’s daily life.
The city of Magdeburg, in eastern Germany, was the scene of a attack on a Christmas market charged with one Saudi doctor who killed five people and injured 200 with his car -41 of them serious-, according to this Saturday’s assessment, he has experienced a day of mourning, characterized by questions that still need to be resolved.
“Our entire country is in mourning with Magdeburg,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said during his visit to the city, which witnessed what the head of the German government has called a “heinous” and “brutal” crime during an intervention in Magdeburg. where he was accompanied by Reiner Haseloff, the Prime Minister of Saxony-Anhalt, the state where the city was attacked the day before.
They both promised to do whatever was necessary investigate what happened and apply the full weight of the law to the person responsible on a day when several parts of the city were filled with flowers in honor of the victims and whose cathedral organized a religious act in favor of the ‘unity’ of the citizens in ‘times ‘. difficult,” according to the conditions of the Magdeburg City Council.
“We must accurately understand the perpetrator, his actions and his motives and then respond with criminal justice and other necessary consequences, and we will do that,” Scholz said, referring to some of the many questions which still surround the circumstances of the attack, the perpetrator of which was arrested after the multiple car accident that destroyed the Christmas market.
The authorities responsible for the investigation in Magdeburg have avoided going into details about the motivation for the attack, which they, however, “attempt“, is the term used by Horst Nopens, public prosecutor of the German city. “We are talking about an attack, we don’t know yet whether it was a terrorist attack,” said Nopens. “We need data storage devices, computers review , devices cell phones and eventually we will know or hope to know what made him tick.
Another circumstance that needs to be clarified is How can a vehicle like the one driven by ‘Taleb A.’ enter the Christmas market area when these facilities in Germany typically take security measures after, at Christmas 2016, a truck was rammed into a Berlin market in an attack claimed by Islamic State.
The profile of the detainee
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser confirmed on Saturday that the author of the run over is “clearly Islamophobic” in his initial statements about the individual, who was arrested shortly after the event.
Unofficial information from German security sources identifies the driver as Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen, Saudi citizen, 50 years old, specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy 50 years old with a permanent residence permite because he was recognized as a refugee in Germany in 2016.
According to the Data Protection Agency, about a year ago a kind of warning about the man to the German authorities for his radical tendency, presenting himself as an activist critical of Islam and defining himself as ‘ex-Muslim’.
The psychiatrist’s life, as shown in media such as the magazine “Der Spiegel” or the newspaper “Frankfurter Rundchau”, goes through the abandonment of the Muslim faith, activism in favor of Saudi women and leads to open sympathies for the extreme right. Alternative for Germany (AfD) and in theories about an alleged plan to Islamize the European Championship, devised, according to him, by former Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The detainee arrived in Germany as a student in 2006 He was granted asylum in July 2016 after receiving death threats for turning away from Islam.. He lived and worked as a psychiatrist in Bernburg, a city of 32,000 inhabitants on the banks of the Saale River, between Magdeburg and Halle.
As an activist informed and advised Saudi women about the options for fleeing their country and had a website with information about the German asylum system.
In an interview he gave to the newspaper “Frankfurter Rundschau” in 2009, he said that many Saudi women came to him for protection after being raped by the man they depended on. In that interview, she said that the German asylum system was a path to freedom for these women.
In another interview with the newspaper ‘Frankfurter Allgemeine’, published in 2009, he described himself as ‘the greatest critic of Islam in all of history’.
From a certain point on, the distance he had taken from Islam became greater open rejection of German immigration policy. Last November, he published a message on his X account with “four demands from the Saudi opposition” and said Germany must protect its borders against illegal migration.
He then accused Merkel of having a plan to Islamize Europe with her open borders policy. In other social media posts, he showed open sympathy for the AfD, saying it was the only party fighting Islam in Germany. Taleb A wanted to establish an academy for ex-Muslims in Germany together with the AfD, according to ‘Der Spiegel’.
Already in the biography that he published in his X-profile, he ended with the remark that “Germany wants to Islamize Europe.”
Just a week ago, an interview of his was broadcast via an Islamophobic blog in the US, in which he claimed that the German state was running a secret operation to persecute ex-Saudi Muslims around the world while granting asylum to Syrians. In another message from X, later deleted, he announced revenge, according to the newspaper ‘Die Welt’.
According to the local newspaper “Magdeburger Zeitung”, Taleb A had missed work in recent weeks due to sick leave.
Five dead and more than 200 injured
The death toll is in accident at a Christmas market in Magdeburg (Germany) has risen to five in recent hours, while the number of injured is more than 200, including dozens of seriously injured.
At least one minor is among the fatalities. The Prime Minister of Saxony Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, briefed the media at the scene of the tragedy.
Yesterday, shortly after 7 p.m., the detainee allegedly rammed himself into the crowd while driving a rental car with a Munich license plate for a route of at least 400 meters through the Christmas market.
Source: EITB
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
