Angry questions in Germany after Christmas market attack
BERLIN
The German government faced growing questions Sunday about whether more could have been done to prevent the Christmas market car-ramming attack that killed five people and injured over 200.
The Saudi suspect, 50-year-old psychiatrist and anti-Islam activist Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, had made online death threats against German citizens and had a history of quarreling with state authorities.
News magazine Der Spiegel, citing security sources, said the Saudi secret service had warned Germany's spy agency BND a year ago about a tweet in which Abdulmohsen threatened Germany would pay a "price" for its treatment of Saudi refugees.
And in August Abdulmohsen wrote on social media: "Is there a path to justice in Germany without blowing up a German embassy or randomly slaughtering German citizens?... If anyone knows it, please let me know."
Die Welt daily reported, also citing security sources, that German state and federal police had carried out a "risk assessment" on Abdulmohsen last year but concluded that he posed "no specific danger."
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has condemned the "terrible, insane" attack on Dec. 20 in the city of Magdeburg and made a call for national unity amid high political tensions as Germany heads towards Feb. 23 elections.
He said it was important "that we stick together, that we link arms, that it is not hatred that determines our coexistence but the fact that we are a community that seeks a common future."
But as German media dug into Abdulmohsen's past, and investigators gave away little, criticism rained down from the far-right and far-left parties already bitterly opposed to the Scholz government.
The far-right AfD's parliamentary head Bernd Baumann demanded Scholz call a special session of the Bundestag on the "desolate" security situation, arguing that "this is the least that we owe the victims."
And the head of the far-left BSW party, Sahra Wagenknecht, demanded that Interior Minister Nancy Faeser explain "why so many tips and warnings were ignored beforehand."
Emotions have run high, and Magdeburg has been in deep mourning over the mass carnage Dec. 20 evening that left a nine-year-old child among the dead and casualties being treated in 15 regional hospitals.
Of the 205 injured, around 40 were in critical condition, with doctors fighting to save their lives.
Police and prosecutors cautioned they were at the beginning of their investigation into what motivated the attack.
Abdulmohsen, who was arrested at the scene next to the heavily damaged car, referred to himself as "a Saudi atheist" in an unpublished interview with AFP from 2022.
As an activist, he helped women flee Gulf countries, and has in the past complained that German authorities were not doing enough to help them.
At the same time, he has criticized the entry of other Muslim migrants and war refugees to Germany and backed conspiracy theories about the planned "Islamization" of Europe.
A harsh critic of Germany's past welcome to many Muslim migrants, he wrote on the platform X that he wished ex-chancellor Angela Merkel could be jailed for life or executed.
