The Prosecutor’s Office of Magdeburg confirmed this Saturday that the multiple accident the day before at the Christmas market is being investigated as a “attack”although it has not yet been possible to define whether it had terrorist motivations.
“We are talking about an attack. If it was a terrorist attack, we don’t know yet. “We must evaluate data storage devices, computers, mobile devices and, after that, we will know or hope to know what motivated the attacker.”Prosecutor Horst Nopens said at a press conference.
According to what he added, in the last few hours, the suspect declared to the police and revealed the causes that led him to the act, for which he faces five counts of murder and others 205 for attempted murder.
This Friday, just after 6:00 p.m., a dark-colored BMW car broke into the city’s Christmas market, injuring 200 people and killing five others, including a nine-year-old boy. The incident lasted just three minutes and, after trying to flee through the routes provided for the entry of ambulances or fire trucks in case of an emergency, the attacker was detained by the Police.
“What happened is something we could not count on,” said Ronni Krug, head of the city council, who assured that a security and emergency protocol had been developed that, due to the nature of this event, was not enough to prevent it. .
The subject was identified as Taleb Jawad al Abdulmohsena Saudi psychiatrist who had arrived in the country in 2006 as a student and, a decade later, had been granted the status of refugee. Currently, he worked as psychiatrist in Bernburg, a small town on the banks of the Saale River.
The Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, assured that the suspect was a “islamophobic”something that was also echoed by local media such as The mirror y Frankfurter Rundchauwhich linked him to the abandonment of the Muslim faith, activism in favor of Saudi women and sympathy for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
For example, from his activist role, Taleb A. He informed and advised the women of his native country about the possibilities that existed for them to leave the territory. and had even created a website providing information on the functioning of the asylum system in Germany, which it considered a path to freedom.
He is the “greatest critic of Islam in all of history,” described him Frankfurter Allgemeine after an interview.
Just a week ago, other statements of his were known, this time on an American Islamophobic blog, in which he accused the German State of being behind a secret operation to hunt down former Saudi Muslims around the world and granting asylum to jihadist sites, while in his X account he had written in August: “Is there a path to justice in Germany without blowing up a German embassy or without openly cutting the throats of German citizens? “I have been looking for this peaceful path since January 2019 and I can’t find it.”
The latter was what led prosecutor Nopens to propose a preliminary hypothesis from which to start, while his declaration is obtained and verified. “It seems that the background of the crime (…) could have been discontent with the treatment of Saudi refugees in Germany”he said earlier.
The chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the scene of the attack and extended his condolences to all those affected by this “terrible catastrophe”. “It is important that we remain united as a country and that we talk to each other,” to work “against those who want to sow hatred”he assured.
(With information from EFE)
