Anti-Islam Saudi immigrant held over Magdeburg attack

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The man who allegedly crashed into a crowd of people at a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday evening, killing four people, is a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who arrived in Germany in 2006, according to authorities. .

Reiner Haseloff, prime minister of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, said the alleged perpetrator, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, was not known to police as an Islamist.

Al-Abdulmohsen's profile on the social networking site X indicates that he is a staunch critic of Islam.

German media reported that he was an activist who helped opponents of the Saudi regime flee the country and seek asylum in Europe.

Abdulmohsen allegedly drove his black BMW

A video posted on social media showed police officers surrounding him at a tram stop. He was seen lying on the ground next to his vehicle, a rental car registered in Munich, and then taken away for questioning.

Authorities in Saxony-Anhalt said four people died in the attack and more than 200 people were injured, 41 of them seriously. Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the scene of the attack on Saturday.

“This is a catastrophe for the city of Magdeburg, for the region and for Germany in general,” Haseloff said.

Since the incident, several interviews with the alleged perpetrator have resurfaced, including one in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from 2019 in which he described himself as “the most aggressive critic of Islam in history.”

He also expressed admiration for Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right anti-immigration party that comes in second behind the center-right CDU/CSU bloc ahead of Germany's national elections in February, and accused Germany of not doing enough. to fight against Islamism.

“After 25 years in this profession, you think that nothing can surprise you anymore,” wrote on X Peter Neumann, terrorism expert at King's College London. “But a 50-year-old ex-Saudi Muslim who lives in East Germany loves the AfD and wants to punish Germany for its tolerance of Islamists. It really wasn't on my priority list. »

The incident comes almost eight years to the day since 12 people were killed and 49 others injured in 2016 on Breitscheidplatz in Berlin when an Islamic State terrorist rammed a truck into a Christmas market.

Much remains unclear about al-Abdulmohsen and his possible motivations.

According to German media, the alleged attacker was born in the Saudi city of Hofuf and arrived in Germany in March 2006 to study. In July 2016, he was granted refugee status after claiming to have received death threats for turning away from Islam.

Authorities said he worked as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist in Bernburg, a town of 32,000 between Halle and Magdeburg.

Spiegel Online reported that he was an activist who helped people – particularly women – flee Saudi Arabia and that he ran a website providing information about the German asylum system. In 2019, he gave interviews about his activities to two German newspapers in which he expressed his hatred of Islam.

In one, he said he “broke” with religion in 1997.

“I found life in Saudi Arabia a challenge, you have to pretend to be Muslim and follow all the rituals,” he said. “I knew I could no longer live in fear and when I realized that even anonymous activism would put my life in danger as an ex-Saudi Muslim, I applied for asylum. »

In the other, he said he wrote articles critical of Islam on an internet forum run by imprisoned activist Raif Badawi and later received death threats.

“They wanted to ‘massacre’ me if I ever returned to Saudi Arabia,” he said. “It wouldn’t make sense to put myself at risk of having to come back and then being killed.”

In recent months, he seems to have moved away from activism and adopted a very critical attitude towards the German authorities who feed on conspiracy theories more often associated with the nationalist right.

In an article on X in November outlining the “demands of the Saudi liberal opposition,” he called on Germany to “protect its borders against illegal immigration.”

“It became clear that Germany's policy of open borders was [former chancellor Angela] Merkel’s plan to Islamize Europe,” he wrote. He also called on Germany to repeal articles of its penal code which, according to him, “limit[…]the population”. . . freedom of expression” by “making it a crime [sic] insult or denigrate religious doctrines or practices.”

Her X profile features a machine gun and claims that “Germany is pursuing Saudi asylum seekers, inside and outside Germany, to destroy their lives.”

Earlier this month, he was interviewed by an anti-Islam blog and accused German authorities of carrying out a covert operation to hunt down ex-Saudi Muslims while granting asylum to Syrian jihadists.