A decide on Sunday ordered a person suspected of killing 5 individuals by driving a automotive right into a crowd at a Christmas market in Germany to stay in detention because the authorities labored to grasp the motives behind an assault that has shocked the nation.
The victims within the assault in the marketplace, which passed off within the japanese metropolis of Magdeburg on Friday night time, had been a 9-year-old boy and 4 girls aged 45 to 75, the Magdeburg police stated in a press release on Sunday.
More than 200 others had been wounded, 41 of them severely, within the assault that shattered the peace of Germany’s Christmas season, which is widely known in tons of of outside markets around the nation.
The suspect, recognized as Taleb A. in line with German privateness legal guidelines, was questioned on Saturday, safety officers stated. The authorities have described him as a 50-year-old Saudi physician who had been residing in Germany for almost 20 years.
Officials stated that they had been nonetheless making an attempt to grasp why the attacker had determined to hire the automotive, an S.U.V., and drive it into the crowded Christmas market in an previous sq. in entrance of Magdeburg’s metropolis corridor.
Holger Munch, head of Germany’s home safety company, the Federal Criminal Office, stated that the authorities had been conscious of the suspect and had obtained a warning about him from Saudi Arabia in November 2023. But he stated that the tip-off “was so unspecific” that the German authorities didn’t deal with it as a sign that the person was plotting an assault.
“He was not seen to be able to violent acts,” Mr. Munch informed the German public broadcaster ZDF.
The state police in Saxony-Anhalt, which incorporates Magdeburg, stated that they’d opened an investigation after that warning and had questioned the Saudi physician however had then closed the inquiry. The authorities stated that he had not fitted their profile of an Islamic extremist and that they didn’t categorize him as a possible risk.
In social media posts, the physician had criticized Germany for what he known as the authorities’ tolerance of radical Islam, in keeping with German information media. A safety official, who spoke on the situation of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, stated that these studies had been correct.
The physician additionally expressed assist on social media for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany occasion and reposted feedback by the group’s leaders warning of the specter of Islamic legislation’s being imposed in Germany.
