By Rob Harris
Saudi authorities reportedly warned Germany about the man alleged to have carried out Friday’s attack on a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg that left five dead and dozens injured, according to German security officials.
The officials told the Financial Times that Riyadh warned the German authorities suspected attacker Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a Saudi dissident who described himself as an ex-Muslim, had boasted on social media that “something big will happen in Germany”. It was unclear if police acted upon the warnings.
A car was driven through this Christmas market on Friday evening in Magdeburg, Germany.Credit: AP
More than 200 were left injured on Friday evening – many still critical – when the man rammed his BMW into Magdeburg’s Christmas market. Al-Abdulmohsen, the suspected attacker, was arrested at the scene. Among the dead was a nine-year-old.
Authorities described him as a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia who came to Germany in 2006 and had been working as a psychiatrist with criminals suffering from addiction at a correctional facility in Bernburg, just south of Magdeburg.
Charges of murder, attempted murder and bodily harm are being prepared against him, German officials said. They repeated that they believed he was acting alone.
Several German media outlets have identified the suspect only as Taleb A., withholding his full name due to privacy regulations in that country.
American broadcaster CNN also spoke to a source with knowledge of the communication who said that the Saudis first warned Germany in 2007 with concerns about his radical views.
The Saudis then requested his extradition from Germany between 2007 and 2008, but the German authorities refused, citing concern for the man’s welfare.
Al-Abdulmohsen’s many posts on social media site X reveal him as a critic of Islam who railed against Muslim immigration into Europe. In recent months, he has exhibited a growing hostility to the German authorities, whom he accused of trying to censor him.
People outside Magdeburg Cathedral follow a memorial service for victims of Friday’s Christmas Market attack, where a car drove into a crowd, in Magdeburg, Germany.Credit: AP
In a post in May – written in English – he declared: “I seriously expect to die this year. Reason: I will bring justice at any cost. And German authorities are impeding all peaceful pathways to justice.”
Prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens linked the motive behind the attack – yet to be classified as terror – to “dissatisfaction over treatment of Saudi refugees in Germany”.
Germany’s interior minister Nancy Faeser told reporters the suspect was “Islamophobic”.
“This was clear to see,” she said, but declined to elaborate on the man’s political affiliations.
The attack has shaken a country already in a phase of political uncertainty following the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition government in November. The government has had to combat a profound economic slump and rising anti-immigrant sentiment.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (centre) visits the scene of the attack.Credit: Bundesregierung via Getty Images
Scholz visited the Magdeburg Christmas market on Saturday, describing the tragedy as brutal when so many people in a place where families were together to celebrate.
He said nearly 40 people “are so seriously injured we must be very worried about them.
“It is a terribly, tragic incident,” he said. “It is important that nothing remains uninvestigated, that every stone is turned.”
‘Most aggressive critic of Islam in history’
Al-Abdulmohsen has written that he publicly renounced Islam after leaving Saudi Arabia and created a website to help opponents of the regime in Riyadh – particularly women – flee the country and apply for asylum in Europe.
He also set up a website as an information source for people in the Arab world who wanted to renounce Islam, according to a video report posted on the BBC’s website in 2019. In it, he describes himself as an ex-Muslim who has helped hundreds of people flee the Gulf region.
His employer issued a statement on Saturday which said: “The alleged perpetrator is a psychiatric specialist employed in the Bernburg correctional facility, who has been working here since March 2020. However, he has not been on duty since the end of October 2024 due to vacation and illness.”
Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, suspected of carrying out the attack.
He had given extensive interviews to German newspapers about his activism in 2019, describing himself to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as “the most aggressive critic of Islam in history”. “If you don’t believe me, ask the Arabs,” he said.
His interviews and social media posts reveal him as a militant critic of Islam who nurtured sympathies for the hard-right populist party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is fiercely opposed to Muslim immigration.
Recently, he had become increasingly hostile to Germany and critical of its strict hate speech laws, which prohibit incitement against certain religious or ethnic groups.
Peter Neumann, director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence at King’s College in London, said on X: “After 25 years in this business, you think nothing could surprise you any more”.
People have laid flowers and candles in front of the Johannis church close to the Christmas market, where a car drove into a crowd on Friday evening, in Magdeburg, Germany.Credit: AP
“But a 50-year-old Saudi ex-Muslim who lives in East Germany, loves the AfD and wants to punish Germany for its tolerance towards Islamists – that really wasn’t on my radar.”
Born in the Saudi city of Hofuf in 1974, Al-Abdulmohsen reportedly left Saudi Arabia to escape the country’s restrictions, finding it impossible to express his atheist views openly in a nation where Islam is the sole legally recognised religion, according to BBC reports.
In an interview this month on an anti-Islam blog, al-Abdulmohsen accused the German authorities of carrying out a covert operation to hunt down Saudi ex-Muslims while granting asylum to Syrian jihadis.
His more recent messages took on an increasingly threatening tone. “I assure you: if Germany wants war, we’ll have one,” he wrote on X in August. “If Germany wants to kills us, we’ll massacre them, die or go with pride to prison.”
German journalist Tim Rohn from Welt also shared on X what he claimed to be an email from a Saudi woman to security officials last year, warning of an attack.
He wrote: “Tragically, we at @welt have the original email that a woman from Saudi Arabia intended to send to the police in Berlin on September 26, 2023. However, she mistakenly sent it to a police station in the 7500-person community of Berlin, New Jersey, US. What happened to it there remains unclear.”
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