Five people, including a nine-year-old boy, were killed when a man drove a car into a building crowded Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, on December 20th.
More than 200 people were injured in the attack on Friday evening, including about 40 people who suffered serious or life-threatening injuries.
On Tuesday, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier used his traditional Christmas address to the nation to call for national unity.
He said: “There is a dark shadow over this Christmas.”
“Hate and violence must not have the last word. Let’s not let ourselves be driven apart. Let’s stand together.”
Authorities reported that the suspect used emergency exit routes to get into the Christmas market grounds, where he plowed through crowds during a three-minute rampage. The man turned himself in to the police on site.
The Magdeburg police announced on Sunday that the suspect was being taken into custody on suspicion of five counts of murder and multiple attempted murders as well as serious bodily harm.
Here’s what we know about the suspect:
Who is the suspect?
The suspicious was identified as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old psychiatrist from Saudi Arabia who has lived in Germany for almost two decades.
He is employed at a clinic that specializes in the treatment of addicts, but has been on sick leave since the end of October.
He described himself as a “Saudi atheist” and Islam-critical activist who helped former Muslims escape from the Gulf states.
Al-Abdulmohsen was active online, Criticism of Germany for accepting too many Muslim refugees and supporting right-wing conspiracy theories about the “Islamization” of Europe.
The news magazine Der Spiegel reported that al-Abdulmohsen was a supporter of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Mina Ahadi, chairwoman of the Central Council of Ex-Muslims in Germany, told the daily that the suspect was known to the council and that he had tried to send a donation about eight years ago.
She recalled his behavior as “aggressive” and said she felt like she was “dealing with a mentally ill person.”
Ahadi wrote on X on Saturday that al-Abdulmohsen had “terrorized” the council for several years.
“His delusions went so far that he assumed that organizations critical of Islamism were also part of the Islamist conspiracy,” she said.
What did the authorities say?
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters on Saturday: “At this point we can only say with certainty that the perpetrator was clearly Islamophobic.” We can already confirm that. Everything else is subject to further investigation.”
On Sunday, she said the attacker “does not fit into any previous pattern” because “he behaved like an Islamist terrorist, although ideologically he is clearly an enemy of Islam.”
Parliamentary committee hearings on the attack will take place on December 30, at which Faeser and the heads of Germany’s domestic and foreign intelligence services will answer questions, a senior lawmaker told AFP.
What was the suspect’s motive?
Magdeburg prosecutor Horst Nopens said Saturday that one factor contributing to the suspect’s motives could be his frustration with Germany’s treatment of Saudi refugees.
The suspect had made online death threats against German citizens and had conflicts with state authorities.
According to a report in the news magazine “Der Spiegel”, citing security sources, the Saudi secret service had alerted the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) to a tweet a year earlier in which al-Abdulmohsen had warned of consequences for Germany’s treatment of Saudi refugees.
In August, he wrote on social media: “Is there a path to justice in Germany without blowing up a German embassy or indiscriminately slaughtering German citizens? … If anyone knows, please let me know.”
Citing security sources, Die Welt newspaper reported that German state and federal police conducted a “risk assessment” of al-Abdulmohsen last year but concluded that he posed “no concrete danger.”
What else is known about the suspect’s motives?
Felix Neumann, policy advisor for security issues at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told Al Jazeera the incident was initially believed to be “an Islamist attack, as it was similar to the Breitscheidplatz attack in 2016 “was very similar” when a truck deliberately drove into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people.
“In view of his online comments, it is now rather unlikely that it was an Islamist attack,” said Neumann.
“The perpetrator was very critical of Islam and shared right-wing extremist narratives on his X account. Further investigation will reveal what ultimately motivated him, but the concept of “salad bar extremism” may apply here.
“This means that each individual picks out the aspects that are plausible for them, but there is no uniform, coherent ideology.”
Could the government have done more to prevent the attack?
Neumann said: “Germany is a federal system that has various advantages, but information exchange is not one of them.”
“Foreign secret services and people who gave information about the perpetrator’s potential threat must now be investigated and it must be determined where there were errors in the information chain.
“This must then be optimized so that potential threat analyzes can be better passed on between authorities.”
