German authorities said they received tips about the suspect last year Car attack at a Christmas market in Magdeburg when more details about the five people killed became known on Sunday.
authorities have identified the suspect as a Saudi doctor who came to Germany in 2006 and received a permanent residence permit. Police have not publicly named the suspect for privacy reasons, but some German news outlets have identified him as Taleb A. and reported that he is a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.
Authorities say he does not fit the usual profile of perpetrators of extremist attacks. He described himself as an ex-Muslim who was highly critical of Islam and expressed support for the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in many social media posts.
He is being held in custody while authorities investigate him.
The head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, Holger Münch, said in a ZDF interview on Saturday that his office received a tip from Saudi Arabia in November 2023 that prompted the authorities to initiate “appropriate investigative measures.”
Germany’s FAZ newspaper said it interviewed the suspect in 2019 and described him as an anti-Islam activist.
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“The man also published a number of posts online. He also had contact with various authorities, made insults and even threats. However, he was not aware of any acts of violence,” said Münch, whose office is the German equivalent of the FBI.
But the warnings turned out to be very non-specific, he said.
The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees also announced on Saturday on X that it had received a tip about the suspect in late summer last year.
“Like any other of the numerous tips, this was taken seriously,” the office said. However, she also pointed out that it was not an investigative agency and had forwarded the information to the relevant authorities. No further details were given.
The Central Council of Ex-Muslims said in a statement that the suspect had “terrorized” them for years and expressed shock at the attack.
“He apparently shared beliefs from the right-wing extremist spectrum of the AfD and believed in a large-scale conspiracy to Islamize Germany. His delusions went so far that he assumed that organizations critical of Islamism were also part of the Islamist conspiracy,” the statement said.
The group’s leader, Mina Ahadi, said in the same statement: “At first we suspected that he might be a mole in the Islamist movement. But now I think he is a psychopath who promotes ultra-right conspiracy ideologies.”
The police in Magdeburg, the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt, announced on Sunday that the deceased were four women aged 45, 52, 67 and 75 and a nine-year-old boy.
According to authorities, 200 people were injured, 41 of whom were in serious condition. They were treated in several hospitals in Magdeburg, about 130 kilometers west of Berlin and beyond.
The suspect appeared before a judge on Saturday evening, who behind closed doors ordered him to be held in custody on murder and attempted murder charges. He faces possible charges.
The horror unleashed by another act of mass violence in Germany makes it likely that migration will remain a key issue as the country heads toward early elections on February 23. A fatal knife attack in Solingen in August brought the issue to the forefront of the agenda and prompted Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government to tighten security measures at the borders.
Right-wing figures from across Europe have criticized German authorities for allowing high levels of migration in the past and for what they now perceive to be security deficiencies.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbánwho has been known for years for a strong anti-migration position, used the attack in Germany to take strong action against the European Union’s migration policy and described it as a “terrorist act”.
At an annual press conference in Budapest on Saturday, Orbán stressed that “there is no doubt that there is a connection between the changing world in Western Europe, the migration that flows there, especially illegal migration, and terrorist attacks.”
Orbán vowed to oppose EU migration policies and claimed without evidence that “Brussels wants Magdeburg to happen to Hungary too.”
