This story was updated at 12:30 pm EST December 21, 2024.
A Saudi Arabian citizen reportedly drove a rented car into a crowd of people at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg on Friday night. At least five people have been killed, including a child, with over 200 wounded.
According to officials, the driver has been identified as a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian citizen who first arrived in Germany in 2006, he was recognized as a refugee by Berlin ten years later. He has since been working as a small town psychiatry and psychotherapy consultant 25 miles south of where the attack took place. The driver has been arrested and officials tentatively believe he is working alone. German media is calling the suspect Taleb A, prosecutors have confirmed his identity as Taleb Al Abdulmohsen.
According to Reuters, Taleb A’s social media posts “indicated support for anti-Islam and far-right parties, including the Alternative for Germany (AfD), as well as criticism of Germany for its handling of Saudi refugees.” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser explained authorities can “say with certainty that the perpetrator was obviously Islamophobic.”
Per spokesmen for Magdeburg and the regional government, of the over 200 victims in the deliberate attack, 40 have been injured severely. Authorities are still working to establish a motive, Reiener Haseloff, the Saxony-Anhalt governor said. Haseloff added, “this is a terrible event, especially now in the days leading up to Christmas.”
There are more than 1,000 Christmas markets put up in Germany each year, these have come under attack previously including in 2016 when a truck plowed into a Berlin crowd, killing 13 people. As a result, these places have been given additional security from police forces, however, it is still unclear how the driver in Magdeburg evaded barriers protecting the market. Surveillance footage being shared on social media shows a dark BMW slamming into the market with those wounded subsequently writhing in pain and screaming before the vehicle turns right down another crowded street.
BBC reports the driver rammed his way across 400 meters of the market before being subdued by police officers who drew their guns at the vehicle before it stopped. During a press conference on Saturday, Horst Walter Nopens, Magdeburg’s chief prosecutor, said “It looks like the background to the crime could have been … dissatisfaction with the treatment of Saudi Arabian refugees in Germany.” Nopens added, “but what is deeper behind this is the subject of the investigation.”
This comes as immigration is a top issue for voters in Germany, with the topic, along with economic issues, dominating the election season. Germany has been taking in considerable numbers of refugees from war-torn countries like Syria, where Berlin’s NATO allies Washington and Turkey are currently backing an Al Qaeda takeover of the capital city.
“I am the most aggressive critic of Islam in history. If you don’t believe me, ask the Arabs,” Abdulmohsen said during a 2019 media interview when describing his online advocacy against Islam as well as his work to help other Saudis apply for asylum. Politico notes, on what is purported to be his X account, Abdulmohsen posted “Germany wants to islamize Europe.” German police were “using dirty tactics against me and other critics of Islam … to destroy our anti-Islam activism,” he insisted.
Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on the Conflicts of Interest podcast. His writing has been featured in media outlets such as Antiwar.com, Counterpunch, and the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. He has also appeared on Liberty Weekly, Around the Empire, and Parallax Views. You can follow him on Twitter @FreemansMind96.
USA: feeding religious fanatics in Eurasia since the 1980s. Stop Talibans now!
Let's see who comes here to cheer this attack then blame it on the US.
I guess the anti-gun people also want autonomous cars, to prevent this sort of thing.
Interesting turn of the unexpected.
“anti Islamist”
If this cretin was Islam phobic then why did he drive into crowds of Christians?
I guess he could have developed a false flag identity before his attack.
Or perhaps more likely his “aggression” towards Islam was just part of his aggression in general. And this is the result.
If someone has a falling out with his native land, as this man apparently did, it could be his own fault or others’ fault. But if we take in every discontented activist, some will just primarily be discontented in general.
He could be blaming Christians for inviting Muslims into their country. Or he could just be a nut
Nobody knows. But Owen Jones compared him to Norwegian Zionist Nazi Breivik, who murdered lots of Norwegians and was at first believed to be an instance of jihadist murderous rampage. It wasn't.
WHY DOES THEIR RELIGION MATTER
Everyone has a hang up with Islam. When millions of people leave Christianity you don't hear them forming "ex-Christians" groups. Where are the "ex Muslims?" They should be condemning this attack.
Actually this murderer is an ex-Muslim and a very militant one, supporter of AfD and Wilders, go figure! Weird thing but that's what has trascended (see my separate comment for further details).
“When millions of people leave Christianity you don’t hear them forming ‘ex-Christians’ groups.”
Perhaps some alternate universe doesn’t have “ex-Christian” groups, but this one is chock full of them.
Of course but they don’t form groups calling themselves ex Christians. These ex Muslims form organization just to attack islam.
Yes, they do form groups calling themselves ex-Christians and they do attack Christianity. As you’d know if you spent 30 seconds on any decent search engine.
Acknowledged. Thanks. Knowledge is light. Now I know how these “ex Muslims” got their ideas. But if they left “ex” you would think they would focus on their new life of positiveness. Getting the masses to leave Christianity or Islam is like spitting at the sun to put it out.
I happen to agree with you on the silliness of it. When it comes to religion, I prefer to just be for what I’m for rather than make it all about whatever I’m against.
Read that the Saudi government tried several times to not only warn the Germans several times over the past year(s), but asked the German government to hand this person over for prosecution in SA prior to this incident.
An anti-Islam militant as Owen Jones reported tonight.
Who ever attacks with weapons of physical destruction, aim is simple, kill or seriously injure. The Greater West is problematic. G-d through Nature instructs balance is achieved through limits. The Greater West accepts no limits. Yet imbalance itself compels the birth of balance.
Read that the Saudi government tried several times to not only warn the Germans several times over the past year(s), but asked the German government to hand this person over for prosecution in SA prior to this incident.
Of course the socialists immediately use this to attack the AfD, which the killer had nothing to do with. And they use the anti-German word "Islamophobic" – about a man who was born Muslim and criticized the religion. Still he has a "phobia," for that which he used to belong to.
When leftists murder people in the U.S. and everywhere else, the media never mention which parties they have clicked like on in social media. Instead they scrub the social media, like they did with the Las Vegas murderer, the worst mass murderer in U.S. history. And when a Black man plowed his car into Whites at a Christmas market, the media didn't mention that he was a BLM supporter. They didn't even mention that he was a Black attacking Whites. No, instead they say "people were killed by a CAR".
When the son of immigrants committed mass murder in Britain recently, the lying press instantly turned it around to "racists lie about the attacker being an immigrant, when he was ACKSHUALLY British!"
But now, the media for once put focus on the attacker, because he had criticized Islam. Never mind that he was Arab, that's just inconvenient. Tie it to the AfD! Don't mention that he wasn't a member and had no connections to them. Say that "he expressed support" for them, and make sure to put it at the top of stories.
Have you considered getting therapy for your continuous and disabling (at least when it comes to making a persuasive argument) obsession with skin color?
He isn't obsessed with skin color, he is obsessed, and rightly so, with double-standards and hypocrisy in the media and its reporting of this nature of story. Your touchiness needs the therapy
What double standard do you think of?
Do you complain and try to find nonexistant injustice this often in real life as well?
I pity you
It's the fault of the Blanc Manges.
Germany doesn’t have a Saudi problem. It has a Turkish problem. And that will go unheeded