The German government must face criticism after the bloody car-ramming attack on the Magdeburg Christmas market, around a question: should the alleged Saudi perpetrator not have been stopped much earlier?
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“Why?” asks the daily Bild, Germany's most read, in an editorial on Sunday.
Why was the 50-year-old doctor suspected of having caused the death of 5 people, and of having injured more than 200 others on Friday evening, not put out of action when for years he multiplied the worrying signals in Germany?
According to the magazine Der Spiegel, the Saudi secret services sent a warning a year ago to their German BND correspondents about Taleb Jawad al-Abdulmohsen. At issue: one of his tweets in which he threatened Germany with a “price” to pay for its treatment of Saudi refugees.
The warning remained a dead letter, while the man increasingly locked himself into conspiratorial and virulent speeches.
He constantly accused Germany of not sufficiently protecting Saudis fleeing their country to escape a rigorous Islam, and on the other hand of welcoming radical Muslims from other countries with open arms.
Court conviction
Last August, he wrote again on his X account: “Is there a path to justice in Germany without blowing up a German embassy or randomly slitting the throats of German citizens? I have been looking for this peaceful path since January 2019 and I have not found it.”
In 2013 he was fined in Rostock for “disturbing public order” and “threats to commit crimes”.
Even in the Saudi community exiled in Germany the man was frightening. “We know him well, he terrorized us for years,” said the president of the Central Council of Former Muslims, Mina Ahadi.
She called him a “psychopath adhering to the conspiratorial ideology of the ultra-right” who “hates not only Muslims, but all those who do not share his hatred.”
The German police had carried out a “risk assessment” concerning him last year, concluding however that he did not pose a “particular danger”, said the daily Die Welt on Sunday.
The Saudi psychiatrist also seemed to be in permanent conflict with the German administration and justice.
The day before the car-ramming attack, he did not attend a court summons in Berlin where he was being prosecuted after causing a scene in a police station which did not want to register one of his complaints, according to media reports Germans.
“The incompetence of the administration, which allowed the horror of Magdeburg, leaves one speechless,” criticized the leader of the German far right in view of the next legislative elections at the end of February, Alice Weidel.
Political controversy
His movement, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), demanded the holding of an extraordinary session of the Chamber of Deputies on the “catastrophic” security situation in the country.
Another anti-system party, this time from the radical left, BSW, makes a similar speech. Its head, Sahra Wagenknecht, demanded that the government explain “why so many warnings were ignored”.
Throughout the weekend, German politicians marched to the scene of the tragedy in Magdeburg, where 5 people, including a 9-year-old child, were killed and more than 200 injured on Friday evening.
The alleged perpetrator, boarding a powerful BMW vehicle, mowed down the crowd while speeding through the Christmas market. The toll could rise further, as around forty people are seriously injured.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz called on the Germans to “stick together”, but the electoral campaign is in full swing and the attack on Magdeburg has revived criticism.
“The government knows what it should do, but it does nothing,” said Saturday evening, on the sidelines of a mass in memory of the victims, a resident of Magdeburg, Peter Havlik, a retired engineer from 65 years old. He accuses him of not wanting to “control the borders” to stop migrants.
