Tragic attack at the Christmas Market in Magdeburg, where a 50-year-old Saudi, psychiatrist Taleb Abdulmohsen, mowed down the crowd on board a car, killing at least five people, including a small child, and injuring about seventy. The man, who arrived in Germany in 2006 and has been working as a doctor for years, was immediately arrested. And in the country that has just voted no confidence in the chancellor and will vote on February 23, people are already wondering what impact this latest brutal act will have on the German vote.
"This is a catastrophe for Magdeburg and for Germany in general," commented Reiner Haseloff, the president of the Saxony-Anhalt region, who confirmed the arrest of the fifty-year-old, who apparently acted as a lone wolf.
The Italian Embassy in Berlin reports that, according to police information, there are no Italians among the confirmed victims. "What happened suggests the worst," commented Chancellor Scholz: " A terrible and crazy action. Now it is important to clarify and do so with the utmost precision and accuracy." For the chief prosecutor of Magdeburg, the attacker's motive "could be dissatisfaction with the way Saudi refugees are being treated in Germany."
Who is Al Abdulmohsen?
The brutal rush through the crowd is being circulated in a video filmed by a CCTV camera, which some German media have reported without publishing . The identity and story of the man arrested by the police is causing great astonishment in Germany: how is it possible, one wonders, that a doctor, who has lived in the Federal Republic for over 18 years, employed on a permanent basis, and active in his profession, could have become radicalized ?
“I am the most aggressive critic of Islam in history. If you don’t believe me, ask the Arabs,” is an excerpt from an interview Al Abdulmohsen gave to the Faz in June 2019, republished today by the German newspaper. Having arrived in Germany from Saudi Arabia in 2006 during his specialist training, the doctor had sought asylum and was already known as an anti-Islamist who helped refugees who wanted to flee their home country and leave Islam .
Not only that, he allegedly wished death on former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In a post published on X on December 5, Abdulmohsen spoke of an alleged “secret criminal plan by Merkel to Islamize Europe.” “Since Germany does not have the death penalty, Merkel should spend the rest of her life in prison. But if the death penalty were to be reintroduced, she would deserve to be killed,” he wrote in English.
More checks at the markets
The "immediate strengthening" of surveillance in the areas "most attractive from a tourist and commercial point of view", where "Christmas markets and fairs" are set up, as well as on the sites that host "entertainment events" and sensitive targets and sites considered at risk, was ordered by a police circular sent to prefectures and police headquarters after the attack in Magdeburg, according to reports. The immediate implementation of information, investigative and territorial control activities was also ordered.
The precedents
The shock in Germany is great: just on Thursday, December 19, the Germans had remembered the attack on the Christmas market in Berlin, at Breitscheidplatz, where the Tunisian Anis Amir had attacked the crowd with a truck killing 13 people, including the Italian Fabrizia di Lorenzo . Yesterday's massacre was committed on board a car, instead, driven at full speed against the crowd for over 400 meters. And it managed to hit dozens of people, betrayed during the pre-Christmas ritual of walking among the stands with mulled wine.
Also tormenting politicians and the public is the increase in the frequency of violent acts of terrorist origin: the last attack on the crowd in 2024 dates back to August 23, when a man armed with a knife attacked the citizens of Solingen, who were celebrating the 650th anniversary of their city with a festival dedicated to diversity, in North Rhine-Westphalia. The toll was three dead and eight injured.
While on May 31 in Mannheim a 25-year-old Afghan had attacked a rally of the far-right movement Pac Europa, wounding 6 people and killing a police officer. The attacks always occurred a few weeks before important electoral appointments, the local elections in the East in the first case, and the European elections in the second. This time too, the question is whether the attack on the market in Magdeburg will be able to increase the consensus of the populist parties of Alice Weidel and Sahra Wagenknecht. "The images of Magdeburg are frightening. When will this delirium end?", wrote the leading candidate for the far-right AfD federal elections on X.
(Online Union)