Got alerts about German market attack suspect last year: Authorities
German authorities said they received tipoffs last year about the suspect in a car attack at a Christmas market in Magdeburg as more details emerged on Sunday about the five people killed.
The authorities have identified the suspect as a Saudi doctor who arrived in Germany in 2006 and had received permanent residency. Police haven’t publicly named the suspect, in line with privacy rules, but some German news outlets have identified him as Taleb A. and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.
Authorities say he does not fit the usual profile of perpetrators of extremist attacks. The man described himself as an ex-Muslim who was highly critical of Islam and in many posts on social media expressed support for the far-right anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
He is being held in custody as authorities investigate him.
“This perpetrator acted in an unbelievably cruel and brutal manner — like an Islamist terrorist, although he was obviously ideologically an Islamophobe,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said Sunday.
The suspect originally lived in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where he completed his specialist training in Stralsund and also came to the attention of authorities due to threatening criminal acts, the state interior minister, Christian Pegel, said Sunday.
In a dispute over the recognition of examination results, he threatened members of the state medical association with an act that would attract international attention, triggering an investigation and a search of his home, the dpa news agency reported, citing Pegel. No evidence was found of real preparations for an attack but a court found him guilty in 2013 of threatening an attack.
That was followed by other threats he made, Pegel said.
The head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, Holger Münch, said in an interview on the German broadcaster ZDF on Saturday that his office received a tipoff from Saudi Arabia in November 2023, which led authorities to launch “appropriate investigative measures.”
