German authorities received tipoffs last year about the suspect in Christmas market attack

[December 23, 2024]  By MICHAEL PROBST and VANESSA GERA

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — German authorities said they received tipoffs last year about the suspect in a car attack at a Christmas market in Magdeburg as more details emerged on Sunday about the five people killed.

Authorities have identified the suspect as a Saudi doctor who arrived in Germany in 2006 and had received permanent residency. Police haven’t publicly named the suspect, in line with privacy rules, but some German news outlets have identified him as Taleb A. and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Authorities say he does not fit the usual profile of perpetrators of extremist attacks. The man described himself as an ex-Muslim who was highly critical of Islam and in many posts on social media expressed support for the far-right anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

He is being held in custody as authorities investigate him.

"This perpetrator acted in an unbelievably cruel and brutal manner — like an Islamist terrorist, although he was obviously ideologically an Islamophobe,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said Sunday.

The suspect originally lived in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where he completed his specialist training in Stralsund and also came to the attention of authorities due to threatening criminal acts, the state interior minister, Christian Pegel, said Sunday.

In a dispute over the recognition of examination results, he threatened members of the state medical association with an act that would attract international attention, triggering an investigation and a search of his home, the dpa news agency reported, citing Pegel. No evidence was found of real preparations for an attack but a court found him guilty in 2013 of threatening an attack.

That was followed by other threats he made, Pegel said.

The head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, Holger Münch, said in an interview on the German broadcaster ZDF on Saturday that his office received a tipoff from Saudi Arabia in November 2023, which led authorities to launch “appropriate investigative measures.”

“The man also published a huge number of posts on the internet. He also had contact with various authorities, made insults and even threats. However, he was not known to have committed acts of violence,” said Münch, whose office is the German equivalent of the FBI.

He said that the warnings, however, proved to be very unspecific.

The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees also said it received a tipoff about the suspect in the late summer of last year.

“This was taken seriously, like every other of the numerous tips,” the office said on X on Saturday. But it also noted that it is not an investigative authority and that it referred the information to the responsible authorities. It gave no other details.

Teddy bears were laid together with candles near the Christmas market, where a car drove into a crowd on Friday evening, in Magdeburg, Germany, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

The Central Council of Ex-Muslims said in a statement that the suspect had “terrorized” them for years as it expressed shock at the attack.

“He apparently shared beliefs from the far-right spectrum of the AfD and believed in a large-scale conspiracy aimed at Islamizing Germany. His delusional ideas went so far that he assumed that even organizations critical of Islamism were part of the Islamist conspiracy,” said the statement.

The group's chairwoman, Mina Ahadi, said in the same statement: “At first we suspected that he might be a mole in the Islamist movement. But now I think he is a psychopath who adheres to ultra-right conspiracy ideologies.”

Police in Magdeburg, the capital of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, said Sunday that those who died were four women aged 45, 52, 67 and 75, as well as a 9-year-old boy.

Authorities said 200 people were injured, including 41 in serious condition. They were being treated in multiple hospitals in Magdeburg, which is about 130 kilometers (80 miles) west of Berlin, and beyond.

The suspect was on Saturday evening brought before a judge, who behind closed doors ordered him to be kept in custody on allegations of murder and attempted murder. He is facing a possible indictment.

The horror triggered by yet another act of mass violence in Germany makes it likely that migration will remain a key issue as the country heads toward an early election on Feb. 23. A deadly knife attack by a suspected Islamic extremist from Syria in Solingen in August pushed the issue to the top of the agenda, and led the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz to tighten border security measures.

Right-wing figures from across Europe have criticized German authorities for having allowed high levels of migration in the past and for what they see as security failures now.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is known for a strong anti-migration position going back years, used the attack in Germany to lash out at the European Union’s migration policies and described it as a “terrorist act.”

At an annual press conference in Budapest on Saturday, Orbán insisted that “there is no doubt that there is a link between the changed world in Western Europe, the migration that flows there, especially illegal migration and terrorist acts.”
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Gera reported from Warsaw, Poland. Associated Press writer Bálint Dömötör in Budapest, Hungary, contributed to this report.

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