Emergency personnel work at a Christmas market after a automobile drove into a bunch of individuals, in response to native media, in Magdeburg, Germany, December 20, 2024.
Axel Schmidt | Reuters
The suspect within the German car-ramming assault that killed five and injured more than 200 on Friday has been recognized as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a self-described member of the “liberal opposition” to Saudi Arabia who has voiced robust anti-Islamic and anti-immigration views.
Two senior U.S. officers aware of the matter recognized al-Abdulmohsen because the suspect.
The automobile allegedly pushed by al-Abdulmohsen plowed 1,200 ft right into a crowd in a slender alley in Magdeburg, a metropolis of about 240,000 individuals west of Berlin, the place customers had gathered Friday evening. The victims embody 4 adults and a 9-year-old baby.
Al-Abdulmohsen, a health care provider from Saudi Arabia who lived in Germany, sought asylum in Germany in 2016, citing threats from Saudi Arabia, earlier than working at a clinic as a “specialist in psychiatry.” But his on-line exercise contains historic and up to date inflammatory content material on X, and he has been accused of erratic habits by an NGO for refugees. He has aligned himself with far-right actions equivalent to Germany’s anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) social gathering, whereas praising figures like Dutch far-right chief Geert Wilders.
Police haven’t launched a motive within the Christmas market assault, however two senior U.S. officers informed NBC News authorities are investigating whether or not the incident is terrorism-related. As of now, German prosecutors have stated they’re planning to file murder and tried murder costs in addition to aggravated assault counts, the senior U.S. officers stated.
Al-Abdulmohsen’s bio on his X account, verified by NBC News, says, “Germany needs to Islamize Europe.”
In December, he retweeted an X occasion titled “Islam — a worldwide downside,” and in November, he retweeted a put up claiming “Islam isn’t a faith.” The similar month, he additionally retweeted Alice Weidel, co-chairwoman of the far-right Alternative for Germany, who accused former Chancellor Angela Merkel of inflicting “critical harm” to Germany, blaming her for “uncontrolled mass immigration.”
In November, al-Abdulmohsen known as Geert Wilders, chief of the Dutch anti-immigrant Party for Freedom, a “true hero” on X. Wilders has been criticized as Islamophobic for evaluating the Quran to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and calling Moroccans “scum.”
The German police declined to touch upon al-Abdulmohsen’s X account because of the ongoing investigation.
In 2019, al-Abdulmohsen informed the newspaper FAZ that he left Islam in his early 20s after pretending he was nonetheless a Muslim. He defined that when he registered on Twitter, his intent was “solely to criticize Islam.”
The Salus clinic on the Bernburg psychiatric hospital confirmed in an e mail to NBC News that the suspect used to work for it as a specialist in psychiatry and was off-duty because the finish of October because of “trip and sickness.”
The NGO Aid for Secular Refugees acknowledged Saturday that “in 2019, members of Secular Refugee Aid filed a grievance with the police following the vilest slander and verbal assaults by (al-Abdulmohsen),” including it was “unable to seek out any motive to elucidate his defamation marketing campaign and the aggressiveness of his accusations.”
Al-Abdulmohsen additionally posted a video the place he used an AI avatar of Elon Musk to criticize the German authorities for what he stated was its suppression of free speech and enabling the abuse of Saudi refugees.
He had beforehand reposted the tech billionaire, who expressed his help for AfD final week, writing on X: “Only the AfD can save Germany.”
