Warnings ‘ignored' before deadly German Christmas market attack
The German government is facing growing questions about whether more could have been done to prevent a fatal Christmas market attack.
WARNING: Distressing
The German government is facing growing questions about whether more could have been done to prevent the Christmas market attack.
A nine-year-old child is among five people who have been killed after a black rented BMW rammed into shoppers in Magdeburg, in eastern Germany on Friday night (local time).
Over 200 people have been injured, including 41 people critically.
A Saudi psychiatric doctor, who has lived in Germany since 2006 and is thought to be a former Muslim, has been arrested.
The 50-year-old main suspect, who has been named by local media as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, held a permanent residence permit.
He had made online death threats against German citizens and had a history of quarrelling with state authorities.
“According to our current information, he acted alone. There is no information on other perpetrators. Everything else is the subject of further investigations,” Saxony-Anhalt’s regional interior minister Tamara Zieschang said.
Police said the vehicle drove “at least 400 metres across the Christmas market” at the city’s central town hall square, which was decorated with Christmas trees and festive lights.
“This is one of the darkest days for Saxony-Anhalt and also for the state capital Magdeburg,” Zieschang said on Friday.
Warnings before attack
Saudi Arabia reportedly sent multiple warnings to German authorities about the suspected attacker before the deadly incident, but they allegedly went ignored, sources told CNN.
One source claimed Saudi Arabi sent a total of four official notifications, known as “Notes Verbal”, to German intelligence services and the country’s foreign ministry.
The notifications reportedly revolved around the man’s efforts to “entice” Saudis to leave their religion.
Meanwhile, news magazine Der Spiegel, citing security sources, said the Saudi secret service had warned Germany’s spy agency BND a year ago about a tweet in which Abdulmohsen threatened Germany would pay a “price” for its treatment of Saudi refugees.
Another official told the Financial Times Saudi Arabi had warned German authorities the man had shared a post on social media, boasting “something big will happen in Germany”.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser had recently called on people to be vigilant at Christmas markets before the attack, although she said that authorities had not received any specific threats.
Domestic security service the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had warned it considers Christmas markets to be an “ideologically suitable target for Islamist-motivated people”.
‘No specific danger’
Die Welt daily reported, also citing security sources, that German state and federal police had carried out a “risk assessment” on Abdulmohsen last year but concluded that he posed “no specific danger”.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has condemned the “terrible, insane” attack Friday in the city of Magdeburg and made a call for national unity amid high political tensions as Germany heads towards elections on February 23.
But as German media dug into Abdulmohsen’s past, and investigators gave away little, criticism rained down from the far-right and far-left parties already bitterly opposed to the Scholz government.
The far-right AfD’s parliamentary head Bernd Baumann demanded Scholz call a special session of the Bundestag on the “desolate” security situation, arguing that “this is the least that we owe the victims”.
And the head of the far-left BSW party, Sahra Wagenknecht, demanded that Interior Minister Nancy Faeser explain “why so many tips and warnings were ignored beforehand”.
Mass-circulation daily Bild asked: “Why did our police and intelligence services do nothing, even though they had the Saudi on their radar? … And why were the tips from Saudi Arabia apparently ignored?”
It charged that “German authorities usually only find out about attack plans in time when foreign services warn them” and called for sweeping reforms after the election for a complete “turnaround in internal security”.
The chairwoman of the group Central Council of Ex-Muslims, Mina Ahadi, said that the Saudi suspect “is no stranger to us, because he has been terrorising us for years”. She labelled him “a psychopath who adheres to ultra-right conspiracy ideologies” and said he “doesn’t just hate Muslims, but everyone who doesn’t share his hatred.”
Suspect’s chilling social media post before attack
The suspect made a disturbing post to X only a few months before the deadly attack.
“Is there a path to justice in Germany without bombing a German embassy or slaughtering German citizens indiscriminately?” he wrote on August 21.
“I have been looking for this peaceful way since January 2019 and I have not found it. If anyone knows it, please guide me.”
Hours before the attack, he posted videos claiming German authorities had been opening his mail and stealing things, including a USB stick.
“I consider the Germans, as citizens, responsible for the persecution I am facing,” he claimed in one video.
“Currently in this country, the nation that is actively criminally chasing Islam critics is the German nation,” he claimed in another.
He also wrote that he wished ex-chancellor Angela Merkel could be jailed for life or executed.
His X bio read: “Saudi Military Opposition. Germany chases female Saudi asylum seekers, inside and outside Germany, to destroy their lives. Germany wants to Islamise Europe”.
He also appeared in a 2019 interview with the BBC World Service and spoke about how he helped asylum seekers “escape” from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region.
“We have arrested the perpetrator, it is a man from Saudi Arabia … a doctor who has been in Germany since 2006,” state premier of Saxony-Anhalt Reiner Haseloff told reporters at the scene.
BREAKING: According to reports from UAE and Saudi Arabian ð• users, the perpetrator of the Christmas market attack in Magdeburg, Germany is a fugitive from Saudi Arabia.
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) December 20, 2024
The German government refused to extradite him despite requests from the Saudi government, citing human… https://t.co/w6vZYXEiOYpic.twitter.com/0p5O4IGh3K
Footage shared earlier by German broadcaster MDR captured the moment police arrested the suspect outside the Christmas market.
In the video, police can be head shouting at the man to lie down on the ground as they point their guns towards him.
Most of the first aid administered by public
One witness, who was spending the evening with his girlfriend and her family, recalled hearing the “sound of shattered glass” during the attack.
“People began to panic,” Gianni Warzecha told the BCC. “I was next to where it happened. For me it was just the sound first.”
Mr Warzecha said members of the public were quick to step in and help those who were injured around them.
“It took a few minutes for first paramedics to arrive, but it wasn’t enough because there were already 200 people hurt,” he explained.
“Most of the first aid was done by people there.”
Another witness said her boyfriend was ripped out of her arms when the car ploughed through the crowd.
“He was hit and pulled away from my side. It was terrible,” Nadine, 32, told German newspaper Bild.
“Nobody even screamed. You couldn’t hear the car either.”
She said her boyfriend, Marco, 39, sustained injuries to his leg and head.
“We don’t know which hospital he went to. The uncertainty is unbearable.”
City mourns victims
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the site of the markets on Saturday along with national and regional politicians.
Mourning residents have left candles, flowers, cards and children’s toys at the Johanneskirche church, where Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier later joined a memorial service.
Scholz pledged the state would respond “with the full force of the law” to the attack but also called for unity as Germany has been rocked by a heated debate on immigration and security ahead of elections in February.
The centre-left chancellor said it was important “that we stick together, that we link arms, that it is not hatred that determines our coexistence but the fact that we are a community that seeks a common future.”
US President Joe Biden is among other world leaders in voicing his condolences “to the people of Germany grieving the terrible attack”.
“No community – and no family- should have to endure such a despicable and dark event, especially just days before a holiday of joy and peace.”
Scholz said he was grateful for the expressions of solidarity “from many, many countries around the world. It is good to hear that we as Germans are not alone in the face of this terrible catastrophe.”
A series of attacks
Germany has in recent times seen a series of suspected Islamist-motivated knife attacks.
Three people were killed and eight wounded in a stabbing spree at a street festival in the western city of Solingen in August.
Police arrested a Syrian suspect over the attack that was claimed by IS. In June, a policeman was killed in a knife attack in Mannheim, with an Afghan national held as the main suspect.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier wrote that “the anticipation of a peaceful Christmas was suddenly interrupted” but he cautioned that “the background to the terrible deed has yet been clarified”.
The leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Alice Weidel, which has focused on jihadist attacks in its campaign against immigrants, wrote on X “when will this madness stop?”
French President Emmanuel Macron said he was “profoundly shocked” the attack and that he “shares the pain of the German people”.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also said she was “deeply shocked by the brutal attack on the defenceless crowd”, adding: “Violence must have no place in our democracies.” Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sanchez said he was “shocked” by the “terrible attack”.
Police and prosecutors cautioned they were at the beginning of their investigation into what motivated the attack.
In previous brushes with the law, Abdulmohsen was first fined by a court in the city of Rostock in 2013 for “disturbing the public peace by threatening to commit crimes”, according to Der Spiegel.
This year he was investigated in Berlin for the “misuse of emergency calls” after arguing with police at a station in Berlin.
He had been on sick leave since late October from his workplace, a clinic near Magdeburg that treats offenders with substance addiction problems.
— with AFP
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