Saudi Man Arrested After Magdeburg Attack: State Premier | Barron’s
A Saudi man has been arrested after a car ramming attack on a Christmas market on Friday in the eastern German city of Magdeburg, the state premier said.
“We have arrested the perpetrator, it is a man from Saudi Arabia,” state premier of Saxony-Anhalt Reiner Haseloff told reporters at the scene.
The suspect was “a doctor who has been in Germany since 2006”, Haseloff said.
No English-language and no non-paywalled content that I could find to link to, sorry: research from German journalists says that the ideological background of the perpetrator seems not to be what you‘d expect at first from someone hailing from Saudi Arabia. His social media posts and videos say he‘s a vocal critic of what his narrative days is the islamisation of Europe and that he sympathises with Alex Jones and the German right wing.
One German-language article that does not seem to be paywalled:
He seems to position himself as a vocal critic of Islam, feels persecuted for it and otherwise seems to be a bit loud and incoherent in his posts.
Victims at present: two dead, of which one small child; 60 injured, of which 15 critical.
Now there are five fatalities, more than 200 injured.
The perpetrator, of Saudi nationality, was an outspoken anti-Islam ex-Muslim but wanted to cooperate in but then got in bitter contention with at least two ex-Muslim organisations. He is a 50 year old medical doctor, psychatrist and psychotherapist and has been working since 2020 as a doctor in a forensic psychiatric prison for drug addicted offenders. On the day before the attack he had a court date for abuse of emergency numbers but did not turn up in court - offense: he had walked into a police station, made complaints that did not make sense, then called the fire emergency number while still talking to police, and asked the emergency operator for legal advice.
An updated version of the German-language article linked above:
Apparently he also held the German nation responsible for the death of Socrates.
It’s funny how many news articles I’ve seen expressing bafflement about why this fan of Elon Musk, Alex Jones and the AfD might have done this. I guess we’ll never know.
The MAGA narrative I’m seeing is once a Muslim, always a Muslim, and therefore this is another example of how Islam is evil.
I am not joking.
It’s so horrible and depressing that this keeps happening, and all we get is politicians making excuses.
Based on what has come out so far, it appears that the guy is a right-wing anti-Muslim crank and general nuisance, who regularly posted insults and threats online. There are a metric crap-ton of cranks and nuisances out there, of all political stripes (and some who aren’t political at all).
While the police and authorities need to take threats seriously, and investigate credible ones, how do you propose the authorities should differentiate between the common asshole who just posts inflammatory crap online, with no actual intent to go do something terrible, versus the similar asshole who is planning to do something terrible?
I heard German authorities were warned repeatedly by Saudi Arabia, and people who had contact with this guy tried to warn German police about him. Why did they ignore these warnings? Why is an immigrant who has a grudge against the German government and has threatened to kill German citizens allowed to stay in Germany? Germans just paid a high price for their generosity.
Based on an article I read today, the German police did not ignore the warnings, but when they followed them up they found them “non-specific”. Which sounds to me like they may have done all they could in the circumstances. Of course I don’t know all the details and it’s possible they could have done more.
This AP article has some more information on the suspect.
He has a long history of making threats against other people and groups, going back to at least 2013 (if not before):
He’s a fervent anti-Islamist (and, apparently, a former Muslim himself), to the point that he has been threatening a support group for former Muslims:
As noted, the Saudi government had given the German government a warning about him last year, but it apparently lacked specifics:
In short:
- He has been on German authorities’ radar for a long time
- He has a long history of being a right-wing, anti-immigration, anti-Islam crank, and regularly making threats, to the point where he was once convicted of a crime for making those threats, but until Friday, had never actually taken violent action.
So, when you have a nasty person, who spends years posting inflammatory crap on social media, and making lots of “threats” against others – but never actually follows through on those threats – what does a government which actually respects the rights of its citizens and resident non-citizens do about him? How can one tell when this time is the time that he actually goes ahead and does something horrible?
When I first heard the story, I was hoping that he’d had a medical episode, like a stroke or a heart attack, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Dangerous people are everywhere, and they even live among us.
Making the threats should be criminalized in-and-of-itself. ‘Caring about your citizen’s rights’ also means freedom to be free from death threats.
I’ve been to several German Christmas markets last year. They are lovely (if kitschy) places full of human joy and warmth. This was terrible, and should not have happened.
Absolutely agreed. According to the AP article, he did get charged, and convicted, with making threats back in 2013. What I don’t think is publicly known yet is exactly what the nature of his other threats were, but at what point does ongoing harassment get charged as a crime in Germany? (And, to what extent were his other threats unhinged general rambling on social media, versus direct threats against specific people or organizations?)
IMO, unhinged ranting on social media that involves any threats needs to get treated just as seriously as any old in-person, mailed or phoned-in threat.
Could be there’s a “cried wolf” situation here. I have no doubt the Saudi government would happily accuse exiled opponents of the House of Saud of violence or extremism in order to get them deported.