The 50-year-old psychiatrist, of Saudi origin, implicated in the car-ramming attack in Magdeburg on Friday, was convicted in 2014 for “disturbing public order”.
Two days after the attack on the Magdeburg Christmas market leaving 200 injured and five dead, certain failings of the German authorities are being singled out. This Monday morning, the daily The world reveals a judgment from the Rostock court dating from 2014, which sentences Taleb A., the main suspect in the attack, to a fine for “disturbance of public order”. The cause? He would have threatened, the day after the double attack at the Boston marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 250, to commit the same type of attack.
“Have you seen the pictures from Boston? It can happen here too”
Let's recap the facts. At the beginning of 2013, Taleb A., a doctor of Saudi origin, allegedly submitted an application to the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Medical Association for admission to the exam to become a psychiatrist. He is then asked for a specific diploma, necessary to validate his registration. Ulcerated by the turn of events and the slowness of the procedure, he telephoned the council of the order. It is a woman who receives it. The aspiring psychiatrist gives him ten days to approve his request, otherwise “something very serious and of international importance” would happen. “Have you seen the pictures from Boston? It can happen here too”he told her again. The day before this call, April 15, 2013, two brothers of Chechen origin, recently naturalized Americans, had planted two bombs near the finish line of the famous Boston marathon. At the end of a four-day manhunt, one of them was killed, the other captured and then found guilty. These attacks, the most serious since September 11 on American soil, had supposedly jihadist motivations which have never been clarified.
The recipient of this call declared to the court that she had been taken aback by the attitude of her interlocutor, who seemed “have carefully considered the consequences”. To defend himself, Taleb A. explained that he was under enormous emotional pressure. Firstly because of its strained financial situation. But also because of threats from Saudi Arabia, linked to his positions against Islam on online forums.
Extradition request from Saudi Arabia
The individual was also monitored by the authorities of Saudi Arabia, the country he had fled in 2006. The German Federal Criminal Police Office revealed that its administration had received, in November 2023, a report from this Gulf State. An investigation was then opened, then closed, due to a lack of evidence representing a “concrete danger”.
This Monday morning, a source confirmed to AFP that there was “an extradition request” from Riyadh, whose authorities had warned Berlin on several occasions of the potential danger of Taleb A. These alerts had not been considered, since the man was at odds with this country, which he had fled after his apostasy in the 1990s. He was threatened with death there.
According to his interventions on social networks, the suspect has since been very involved in the fight against strict Islam. He had created an association to help former Muslims who wish to leave the Gulf region to obtain asylum in the West. “There is no good Islam”he told the German newspaper FAZ. For a year, he had affirmed on his X account his desire to “take revenge” of Germany, incapable of protecting Saudi refugees. The German government has promised a rapid investigation, aimed at clarifying possible errors by the authorities in preventing this deadly attack.
