Magdeburg:The Saudi suspect in Germany's deadly car-ramming attack on a Christmas market held strongly anti-Islam views and was angry with Germany's migrant and asylum policy, officials said Saturday.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the "terrible, insane" attack that killed five people and shocked the nation, days before Christmas and eight years after a jihadist drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin.
Police were puzzling over the motive of Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, the main suspect after an SUV ploughed at high speed through a dense crowd in the eastern city of Magdeburg Friday. As well as killing five people, the vehicle wounded 205 others. A nine-year-old child was among the dead and casualties were being treated in 15 regional hospitals.
Germany has been hit by multiple deadly jihadist attacks, but evidence gathered by investigators and his past online posts painted a different picture of Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old doctor of psychiatry.
In an unpublished interview with AFP from 2022 for an unrelated story, Abdulmohsen presented himself as "a Saudi atheist". He has helped Saudi women flee their country -- but also railed against what he saw as Germany's permissive attitude towards refugees from other mainly Muslim countries.
Interior Minister Nancy Fraser said he held "Islamophobic" views. And a prosecutor said that "the background to the crime... could have been disgruntlement with the way Saudi Arabian refugees are treated in Germany".
Taha Al-Hajji of the Berlin-based European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights told AFP Abdulmohsen was "a psychologically disturbed person with an exaggerated sense of self-importance".
Call for unity
In his online posts, Abdulmohsen spoke about his troubles with and suspicions of German authorities. Last August, he posted 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, citing security sources, that German state and federal police had carried out a "risk assessment" on him last year but concluded that he posed "no specific danger". A sombre Scholz, dressed in black, visited the attack site Saturday together with national and regional politicians laying flowers outside the main church in Magdeburg.
Local people have left candles, flowers, cards and children's toys at the Johanneskirche church, where Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier later joined a memorial service. Scholz pledged the state would respond "with the full force of the law" to the attack. But he also called for unity as Germany has been rocked by a heated debate on immigration and security ahead of elections in February.