The German government has vowed to investigate whether a Christmas market car attack that killed five people and injured 200 could have been prevented, after it emerged that authorities had received multiple warnings about the suspect.
Amid mounting criticism of Germany’s security apparatus, the interior minister, Nancy Faeser, said on Sunday that the heads of the domestic and foreign intelligence services would be questioned by two parliamentary committees next week.
The man arrested at the scene of Friday’s attack in Magdeburg, a Saudi-born psychiatrist named by German media as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, 50, had made online threats to kill German citizens and has a history of disputes with state authorities.
A self-described “Saudi atheist” who helped women flee Gulf countries, he had been strongly critical of Berlin for allowing in too many Muslim refugees and had repeatedly backed far-right conspiracy theories about the “Islamisation” of Europe.
Abdulmohsen voiced support on the social media platform X for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party and for X’s owner, the US billionaire Elon Musk, who has publicly backed AfD, saying only the anti-immigration party “can save Germany”.
The victims were identified as four women aged 52, 45, 75 and 67 and a nine-year-old boy who was named by his mother on Sunday as André Gleißner.
“Let my little teddy bear fly around the world again,” Désirée Gleißner said on Facebook. “André didn’t do anything to anybody. He was only with us on earth for nine years. Why you? Just why? You will always live on in our hearts … I promise you that.”
Faeser said on Sunday the task was to “paint a picture” of a suspect “who does not fit any existing mould”. He had acted in “an unbelievably cruel and brutal manner, like an Islamist terrorist, though he was clearly ideologically hostile to Islam”, she said.
She promised Bild newspaper that “no stone will be left unturned”, adding that authorities would “clarify all this background. They will also examine in detail what information was available in the past, and how it was followed up.”
The head of the federal criminal police, Holger Münch, told the public broadcaster ZDF that his office received a tipoff from Saudi Arabia in November 2023 that led authorities to launch “appropriate investigative measures”.
Abdulmohsen had “published a huge number of posts on the internet”, Münch said, and also “had contact with various authorities, making insults and even threats. However, he was not known to have committed acts of violence.”
Germany’s federal office for migration and refugees said it received a tipoff about the suspect last summer. “This was taken seriously, like every other of the numerous tips,” it said, adding that it had referred the person offering the tip directly on to relevant authorities.
Der Spiegel magazine said the Saudi secret service alerted Germany’s spy agency BND last year to a post in which Abdulmohsen threatened Germany would “pay a price” for its treatment of Saudi refugees.
Police said on Sunday that Abdulmohsen, who arrived in Germany in 2006 and had permanent residency, was remanded in custody late on Saturday evening after prosecutors pressed charges of murder, attempted murder and grievous bodily harm.
The three-minute attack, in which a dark-coloured, rented BMW SUV ploughed at speed through the crowded market shortly after 7pm on Friday, injured 205 people, 41 of whom were still in a serious or critical condition on Sunday.
As thousands mourned the victims in Magdeburg on Saturday night, scuffles broke out at a far-right rally in the city, billed as a “demonstration against terror” and attended by more than 2,000 people, local media reported.
Protesters in black balaclavas chanted “migration kills” and held up a large banner bearing the word “remigration”, a term popular with anti-immigration extremists seeking the mass deportation of migrants and people deemed not ethnically German.
A sea of flowers stretched out in front of St John’s church in Magdeburg, close to the scene of the crime, which attracted a steady stream of tearful mourners throughout the weekend, many of whom returned more than once, local media reported.
Abdulmohsen has described himself as a former Muslim and was an active user of X, sharing dozens of posts daily focusing mainly on anti-Islam themes, criticising the religion and congratulating former Muslims who had abandoned it.
As recently as August, he wrote on social media: “Is there a path to justice in Germany without blowing up a German embassy or randomly slaughtering German citizens? … If anyone knows it, please let me know.” He also posted on X that he wished Germany’s former chancellor Angela Merkel could be jailed for life or executed.
As early as 2013, he was fined by a court in the city of Rostock for “disturbing the public peace by threatening to commit crimes”. This year he was investigated in Berlin for the “misuse of emergency calls” after arguing heatedly with officers at a police station, local media reported. He had been on sick leave from his workplace, an addiction clinic near Magdeburg, since October.
Mina Ahadi, the chair of an association of former Muslims in Germany, said Abdulmohsen was “no stranger to us, because he has been terrorising us for years”. She labelled him “a psychopath who adheres to ultra-right conspiracy ideologies”.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, on Saturday condemned the “terrible, insane” attack and called for national unity amid mounting political tension in the country as it heads towards federal elections on 23 February.
Opposition parties were swift to criticise his government. The anti-immigration AfD’s parliamentary leader, Bernd Baumann, demanded Scholz call a special session of the Bundestag on the “desperate” security situation.
AfD has strong support in the former East Germany, where Magdeburg is located, and is in second place nationally in the polls. Leading members, including its candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, planned a rally in Magdeburg on Monday evening.
Andrea Lindholz, of the centre-right Christian Social Union, which as the CDU/CSU alliance is leading in the polls, said the attack “raises questions about authorities’ knowledge of warnings from home and abroad. These questions must be answered.”
The head of the far-left BSW party, Sahra Wagenknecht, said: “The background must be clarified. But above all, we must do more to prevent such offences, especially as there were obviously specific warnings and tips in this case that were ignored.”
• This article was amended on 23 December 2024. Germany’s federal office for migration and refugees said it had directed to relevant authorities the person who provided a tip about the Magdeburg suspect, not that it had passed on the tip itself as an earlier version said.
