Angry questions in Germany after Christmas market attack

BERLIN, Germany — The German government faced growing questions Sunday about whether more could have been done to prevent the Christmas market car-ramming attack that killed five people and injured over 200.

The Saudi suspect, 50-year-old psychiatrist and anti-Islam activist Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, had made online death threats against German citizens and had a history of quarrelling with state authorities.

News magazine Der Spiegel, citing security sources, said the Saudi secret service had warned Germany's spy agency BND a year ago about a tweet in which Abdulmohsen threatened Germany would pay a "price" for its treatment of Saudi refugees.

And in August Abdulmohsen 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."

Die Welt daily reported, also citing security sources, that German state and federal police had carried out a "risk assessment" on Abdulmohsen last year but concluded that he posed "no specific danger".

Chancellor Olaf Scholz has condemned the "terrible, insane" attack Friday in the city of Magdeburg and made a call for national unity amid high political tensions as Germany heads towards February 23 elections.

He said it was important "that we stick together, that we link arms, that it is not hatred that determines our coexistence but the fact that we are a community that seeks a common future".

But as German media dug into Abdulmohsen's past, and investigators gave away little, criticism rained down from the far-right and far-left parties already bitterly opposed to the Scholz government.

The far-right AfD's parliamentary head Bernd Baumann demanded Scholz call a special session of the Bundestag on the "desolate" security situation, arguing that "this is the least that we owe the victims".

And the head of the far-left BSW party, Sahra Wagenknecht, demanded that Interior Minister Nancy Faeser explain "why so many tips and warnings were ignored beforehand".

'Ultra-right conspiracy ideologies'

Emotions have run high, and Magdeburg has been in deep mourning over the mass carnage Friday evening that left a nine-year-old child among the dead and casualties being treated in 15 regional hospitals.

Of the 205 injured, around 40 were in critical condition, with doctors fighting to save their lives.

Surgeons have worked around the clock, with one health worker telling local media of "blood on the floor everywhere, people screaming, lots of painkillers being administered".

Police and prosecutors cautioned they were at the beginning of their investigation into what motivated the attack.

Abdulmohsen, who was arrested at the scene next to the heavily damaged car, referred to himself as "a Saudi atheist" in an unpublished interview with AFP from 2022.

As an activist, he helped women flee Gulf countries, and has in the past complained that German authorities were not doing enough to help them.

At the same time, he has criticised the entry of other Muslim migrants and war refugees to Germany and backed conspiracy theories about the planned "Islamisation" of Europe.

A harsh critic of Germany's past welcome to many Muslim migrants, he wrote on the platform X that he wished ex-chancellor Angela Merkel could be jailed for life or executed.

In previous brushes with the law, he was first convicted and fined by a court in the city of Rostock in 2013 for "disturbing the public peace by threatening to commit crimes", according to Der Spiegel.

This year he was investigated in Berlin for the "misuse of emergency calls" after arguing with police at a station in Berlin.

He had been on sick leave since late October from his workplace, a clinic near Magdeburg that treats offenders with substance addiction problems.

The chairwoman of the group Central Council of Ex-Muslims, Mina Ahadi, said that the Saudi suspect "is no stranger to us, because he has been terrorising us for years".

She labelled him "a psychopath who adheres to ultra-right conspiracy ideologies" and said he "doesn't just hate Muslims, but everyone who doesn't share his hatred."