Factbox – The facts about the suspect in the German Christmas market attack By Reuters
BERLIN (Reuters) – Here is what we know so far about the man arrested as the suspected driver of a car attack on Friday at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg that killed five people and injured around 200. .
GERMAN LIFE
The suspect is a 50-year-old from Saudi Arabia and has permanent residency in Germany, where he has lived for nearly two decades.
The suspect has not been identified by the authorities. Many German media reports refer to him as Taleb A.
The suspect has been working as a psychiatrist at a special rehabilitation clinic for drug addicts in Bernburg since March 2020. “Since the end of October 2024, he has been absent due to vacation and illness,” the center said in a statement.
He lived on a quiet street near the center of Bernburg, a town of 30,000 people, south of Magdeburg, in a three-story building.
POSSIBLE PURPOSE
German authorities said the suspect was not known to authorities as an Islamist.
The Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, refused to comment on the suspect’s motives for attacking him or his political parties but said his Islamophobia was “obviously visible”.
The local prosecutor in Magdeburg, Horst Nopens, said that the possible cause of this attack could be “the suspect’s dissatisfaction with the treatment of Saudi refugees in Germany” but added that the reason is still unclear.
LONG DRAWING FOR FOOD
Taleb A. appeared in several media interviews in 2019 reporting on his activist work helping Saudi Arabians who had turned their backs on Islam to flee to Europe.
In a BBC documentary from July 2019, the man talks about setting up the wearesaudis.net forum after becoming an atheist and seeking asylum in Germany.
He is a fierce critic of Islam in these discussions, telling the German newspaper FAZ in June of that year: “There is no good Islam.”
His social media account X, verified by Reuters, showed support for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), and US billionaire Elon Musk, who has criticized German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and expressed support for him. the AfD.
