The Saudi authorities, I’m told, are currently working hard to collect everything they have about Magdeburg market suspect Taleb al-Abdulmohsen and share it “in every way possible” with the ongoing German investigation.
Within the imposing sand-colored and fortress-like walls of the Saudi Foreign Ministry in Riyadh, there is perhaps justifiably a feeling of exasperation.
The ministry had previously warned the federal government about al-Abdulmohsen’s extremist views.
She sent four so-called “Notes Verbal”, three of them to the German secret services and one to the Foreign Office in Berlin. There was, the Saudis say, no reaction.
Part of the explanation for this may lie in the fact that Taleb al-Abdulmohsen received asylum from Germany in 2016, a year after Former Chancellor Angela Merkel has opened her country’s borders to take in more than a million migrants from the Middle East, ten years after al-Abdulmohsen settled in Germany.
Coming from a country where Islam is the only religion allowed to be practiced in public, al-Abdulmohsen was a very unusual citizen.
He had turned his back on Islam and made himself a heretic in the eyes of many.
Born in 1974 in the Saudi date palm oasis town of Hofuf, little is known about his early life before he decided to leave Saudi Arabia and move to Europe at the age of 32.
He is active on social media and describes himself as both a psychiatrist and the founder of the Saudi human rights movement on his Twitter account (later X), along with the tag @SaudiExMuslims.
He founded a website to help Saudi women escape to Europe.
The Saudis say he was a human trafficker and Interior Ministry investigators, the Mabaatheth, are said to have an extensive file on him.
In recent years there have been reports of hostile surveillance of dissident Saudis in Canada, the United States and Germany by Saudi government agents.
There is no question that the German authorities, both federal and state, made some serious errors of omission in the al-Abdulmohsen case.
Whatever their reasons, as the Saudis claim, for not responding to repeated warnings about his extremism, he clearly posed a threat to his electoral host country.
Added to this is the failure to block or at least guard the emergency entrance to Magdeburg’s Old Market, which allegedly allowed him to drive his BMW into the crowd.
German authorities have defended the layout of the market and said an investigation into the suspect’s past was underway.
To make matters worse, Saudi Arabia, although considered a friend and ally of the West, has a poor human rights record.
Until June 2018 Saudi women were banned from driving and even the women who previously publicly called for the ban to be lifted were persecuted and imprisoned.
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, just in his 30s, enjoys great popularity in his own country.
While Western leaders largely distanced themselves from him following his alleged involvement in the atrocity The murder of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. The murder of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018Whatever the Crown Prince denies, his star is still on the rise at home.
Under his de facto rule, public life in Saudi Arabia has changed for the better: men and women are allowed to assemble freely, cinemas are reopening, large, spectacular sporting and entertainment events are taking place, even concerts by Western artists such as David Guetta and Co Black-Eyed Peas.
But there is a paradox here.
While public life in Saudi Arabia flourished, everything that even hinted at greater political or religious freedom was cracked down on.
Harsh prison sentences of 10 years or more are imposed for simple tweets.
No one is allowed to even question the way the country is run.
Against this background, Germany seems to have lost the ball with Taleb al-Abdulmohsen.
