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Saudi authorities repeatedly warned Germany in regards to the man alleged to have carried out Friday’s attack on a Christmas market within the east German city of Magdeburg that left five dead and dozens injured, in line with German security officials.
The officials said Riyadh warned the German authorities the suspected attacker, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a Saudi dissident who described himself as an ex-Muslim, had boasted on social media that “something big will occur in Germany”. It was unclear if police ever acted upon the warnings.
Al-Abdulmohsen’s many posts on social media site X reveal him as a fierce critic of Islam who railed against Muslim immigration into Europe and in recent months exhibited a growing hostility to the German authorities, whom he accused of attempting to censor him.
Five people were killed and greater than 200 injured on Friday evening when a person rammed into Magdeburg’s Christmas market. Al-Abdulmohsen, the suspected attacker, was arrested on the scene. Authorities described him as a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia who got here to Germany in 2006 and had been working as a psychiatrist in Bernburg, just south of Magdeburg.
The attack has darkened the mood in a rustic already scuffling with a profound economic slump and a phase of political uncertainty following the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s shaky three-party coalition government in November.
It got here almost eight years to the day after an Islamic State militant ploughed a truck right into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12, and injuring 49 in one among Germany’s worst ever terror attacks.
Scholz visited Magdeburg on Saturday, calling the incident a “terrible deed” and promising that “no stone will likely be left unturned” in investigating the crime.
Al-Abdulmohsen was an activist who publicly renounced Islam after leaving Saudi Arabia and created an internet site to assist opponents of the regime in Riyadh — particularly women — flee the country and apply for asylum in Europe.
His interviews and social media posts reveal him as a militant critic of Islam who nurtured sympathies for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right party fiercely against Muslim immigration.
In recent months he had change into increasingly hostile to Germany, and important of its strict hate speech laws which prohibit incitement against certain religious or ethnic groups.
He gave extensive interviews to German newspapers about his activism in 2019, describing himself to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as “essentially the most aggressive critic of Islam in history”. “In case you don’t consider me, ask the Arabs,” he said.
“After 25 years on this business, you’re thinking that nothing could surprise you any more,” wrote Peter Neumann, an authority in terrorism at King’s College, London, on X. “But a 50-year-old Saudi ex-Muslim who lives in East Germany, loves the AfD and desires to punish Germany for its tolerance towards Islamists — that actually wasn’t on my radar.”
In one among the 2019 interviews, he said he had “broken away” from Islam in 1997.
“I discovered life in Saudi Arabia an ordeal, you may have to pretend you’re a Muslim and follow all of the rituals,” he said. “I knew I could not live in fear and after I realised that even anonymous activism would put my life in peril as a Saudi ex-Muslim, I applied for asylum.”
In the opposite, he said he had written posts criticising Islam in an online forum run by the jailed activist Raif Badawi and subsequently received threats to his life.
“They desired to ‘slaughter’ me if I ever returned to Saudi Arabia,” he said. “It wouldn’t have made any sense to show myself to the danger of getting to return after which be killed.”
In recent months, he appeared to have moved away from activism and switched to railing against the German authorities, peddling conspiracy theories more often related to the nationalist right. In some posts he alleged he was being censored and persecuted by the German authorities.
In a post on X in November setting out the “demands of the Saudi liberal opposition” he called on Germany to “protect its borders against illegal immigration”.
“It has change into evident that Germany’s open borders policy was [former chancellor Angela] Merkel’s plan to Islamise Europe,” he wrote. He also demanded Germany repeal sections of its penal code that he claims “limit . . . free speech” by “making it an offense [sic] to insult or belittle religious doctrines or practices”.
His X profile contains a machine gun and claims “Germany chases female Saudi asylum seekers, inside and outdoors Germany, to destroy their lives”.
In an interview earlier this month on an anti-Islam blog he accused the German authorities of carrying out a covert operation to seek out Saudi ex-Muslims while granting asylum to Syrian jihadis.
In recent months his messages took on an increasingly threatening tone. “I assure you: if Germany wants war, we’ll have one,” he wrote on X in August. “If Germany desires to kills us, we’ll massacre them, die or go together with pride to prison.”
