The main suspect, Taleb A., did not put up any resistance when he was arrested by the police following his deadly raid at the wheel of his rental vehicle.
Wrapped in their navy blue uniforms, the police stand guard around the Magdeburg Christmas market, the target of a fatal attack on Friday evening, the lights of which are still on. Red Cross first aiders are there just in case. Dozens of German police vans are stationed to barricade access to the party venue. A mission that concrete blocks repainted in green and red were supposed to fulfill, but the driver found the flaw in the system, along the tram rails, to launch his black SUV against the crowd…
Passersby, under the icy wind and hailstorms, do not understand this attack. Ralf and Verena take a Stalinist-style alley which borders the square's market. They go to work, but they are still shocked. “It’s unimaginable and it’s scary that something like this would happen at Christmas. I find this terrible when it should be a moment of peace. I am devastated that this happened here in this Christmas market, here in front of us. I find it sad and it hurts and we don’t know why he did this.”
A psychiatrist
The main suspect did not put up any resistance when he was arrested by the police following his deadly raid at the wheel of his rental vehicle. In the video of his arrest, Taleb A. wears a small salt and pepper goatee, jeans, and a khaki jacket. He is a Saudi refugee, a psychiatrist who worked for years in a hospital in the Bernburg region, where some seriously injured people were treated.
On social networks we see that he was also very politically engaged. For years he has presented himself as an anti-Islam activist. Recently he had posted a lot of messages relaying the discourse of the German far right and slogans from the Afd party to demand a closure of the borders, because he believed that the government had a secret plan to Islamize the country. The man, who was not registered as an extremist nor monitored by the police, also regularly contributed to conspiracy or American identity websites.
It is time for investigation but also for contemplation. The mourning of an entire nation that Chancellor Olaf Scholz will come to express here at the end of the morning.
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