The man arrested for the attack on the Magdeburg Christmas market is Taleb Al Abdulmohsen, an anti-Islam activist. He fled Saudi Arabia as an atheist. He lives in Bernburg in the district of Salzland, has a permanent residence permit and works as a doctor in a private facility. According to Der Spiegel, he is a fan of Elon Musk and the US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, as well as the British right-wing activist Tommy Robinson.
He was not at all known for his sympathies towards the jihadist movement. On the contrary, explains AFP, he seems more like a man who feels persecuted, who has broken with Islam and on the contrary denounces the dangers of the Islamization of Germany. Some media even attribute links to the German far right. On X as a profile picture he has a stylized close-up of himself. On the cover, however, there is an enormous Ar-15, the American-made semi-automatic rifle known for being the most used in mass massacres in the United States. If the Islamist matrix was one of the hypotheses being examined by the investigators, reading his social channel very different ideas emerge. In the bio on X he writes: “Saudi military opposition. Germany pursues Saudi asylum seekers, in and out of Germany, to destroy their lives. Germany wants to Islamize Europe.”
From what emerges, Taleb Al Abdulmohsen criticizes Germany because, in his opinion, it is excessively open to the culture and religion of its places of origin. The ones from which he, an atheist, ran away. After receiving asylum, Al Abdulmohsen founded the wearesaudis.net forum, which quickly became a point of reference for atheists who want to leave Muslim countries and this earned him a certain notoriety, so much so that his commitment was described in articles and interviews on media such as BBC or Al Jazeera.
“It is a catastrophe for Magdeburg and for Germany in general,” commented Reiner Haseloff, the president of the Saxony-Anhalt region, who confirmed the arrest of the fifty-year-old.
After the Magdeburg attack, security at German Christmas markets was tightened. In Berlin, Interior Senator Iris Spranger announced the strengthening of measures and the increase in the presence of law enforcement. The capital's police and fire brigade forces also immediately mobilized to support their colleagues in Magdeburg. The city of Halle similarly intensified controls, with more officers deployed along access roads. In a gesture of solidarity, the market in the city of Saxony-Anhalt – of which Magdeburg is the capital – will be silent in the coming days, with no music among the stalls. Patrols were also strengthened in Leipzig and Erfurt.
