The essentials
• Five people died and more than 200 were injured on Friday when a car crashed into a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg.
• A suspect of Saudi origin was arrested.
• Psychological disorders suffered by the 50-year-old psychiatrist arrested at the scene? Another motivation? “In the current state of the investigation, it is not yet possible to categorize what happened at the Christmas market” Friday evening, local police said.
The live
4:22 p.m. | 'Unhappy' with treatment of Saudi refugees
Asked about the suspect's motives, local prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens said the investigation was ongoing, but “it appears that the crime could have as a background dissatisfaction with the way refugees from Saudi Arabia are processed in Germany.
3 p.m. | What is the profile of the suspect?
Taleb Jawad al-Abdulmohsen is a 50-year-old Saudi refugee from a Shiite Muslim family, but openly declaring himself an “atheist” and “anti-Islam.” Living in Germany since 2006, a doctor working as a psychiatrist in the town of Bernburg, near Magdeburg and with refugee status, he was not known for his sympathies with the jihadist movement. He lived and worked for years in the region of Saxony-Anhalt, the capital of which is Magdeburg, 160 kilometers from Berlin.
The profile of the suspect is intriguing and his frequent positions on social networks paint the portrait of a man feeling persecuted, having broken with Islam and denouncing on the contrary the “dangers” of an Islamization of Germany.
In an interview with German media Frankfurter Rundschau A few years ago, he claimed to have been “threatened with death for apostasy from Islam”, an argument often invoked by several asylum seekers in Europe. In 2022, in an interview with AFP, he presented himself as “an atheist Saudi”, saying that “young Saudis, especially women, are not only fleeing the Saudi regime, they are also fleeing Islam” .
Some media even attribute connections to the German far right. In any case, he was known in the community of Saudi emigrants in Germany.
“He is a psychologically disturbed and excessively pretentious person,” Taha al-Hajji of the Berlin-based Euro-Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR) told AFP. “It is certainly not an attack motivated” by religion, he added.
According to him, the suspect was “banished” from the Saudi diaspora in Germany where he was known for his help to asylum seekers, particularly women.
Last August, he wrote on his X account: “Is there a path to justice in Germany without blowing up a German embassy or randomly slaughtering German citizens? I have been looking for this peaceful path since January 2019 and I cannot I haven't found it. If anyone knows it, please let me know. Under his post, he denounced “Germany's crimes against Saudi refugees and obstruction of justice, no matter how much evidence we present to them.”
1:16 p.m. | “Our country mourns Magdeburg”
“Our entire country mourns Magdeburg,” the German chancellor wrote on X after his visit to the scene of the attack.
1:14 p.m. | The alleged perpetrator is “Islamophobic”
The alleged perpetrator of the deadly attack on the Magdeburg Christmas market, a doctor of Saudi origin, is “Islamophobic”, declared German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, who came with the Chancellor to the scene of the tragedy .
Asked by journalists about the suspect's motivations, she declared that “the only thing” she was able to confirm is “that he is Islamophobic” given his known positions.
12:33 p.m. | Scholz calls for “sticking together”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised on Saturday “to act against those who want to sow hatred”, calling on the country to “stick together”.
“It is important as a country to stay together, that we stick together and that we talk to each other,” declared the Chancellor at the scene of the tragedy, assuring: “We will not let those who want to sow hatred pass. “
He arrived earlier in the day to pray. Dressed in black, he was accompanied in particular by national and regional ministers carrying flowers.
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The death toll from the car-ramming attack committed on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, on Friday rose to five dead and more than 200 injured, the head of regional government Reiner Haseloff announced on Saturday.
“In the meantime, we have five human lives to deplore. And more than 200 injured, including many serious and very serious injuries. And this is a dimension that none of us could have imagined,” he said. -he declared on the spot. At his side, Chancellor Olaf Scholz denounced a “terrible” and “crazy” act.
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