BERLIN (Reuters) – Here's what we know so far about the man arrested as the suspected driver in a car-ramming attack on Friday at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg that killed five people and injured about 200 others. .
Life in Germany
The suspect is a 50-year-old man from Saudi Arabia who has permanent residency in Germany, where he has lived for nearly two decades.
The suspect has not been named by authorities. Many German media reports refer to him as Talib A.
The suspect has worked as a psychiatrist at a specialized clinic for the rehabilitation of addicted criminals in Bernburg since March 2020. “Since the end of October 2024, he has been absent due to vacation and illness,” the facility said in a statement.
He lived on a quiet street near the center of Bernburg, a town of 30,000, south of Magdeburg, in a three-storey apartment building.
Possible motive
German authorities said early on that the suspect was not known to authorities as an Islamist.
Interior Minister Nancy Viser declined to comment on the suspect's motives for the attack or his political affiliations, but said his Islamophobia was “clearly evident.”
Magdeburg's local prosecutor, Horst Nobbens, said one possible factor in the attack may have been the suspect's “dissatisfaction with the treatment of Saudi refugees in Germany,” but added that the motive remained unclear.
Far-right sympathies
Student A appeared. In a number of media interviews in 2019, he spoke about his activist work helping Saudis who had turned their backs on Islam to flee to Europe.
In a documentary broadcast by the BBC in July 2019, the man talked about founding the wearesaudis.net platform after he became an atheist and sought asylum in Germany.
He is a fierce critic of Islam in these interviews, telling the German newspaper FAZ in June of that year: “There is no good Islam.”
His account on the social media platform Alternative for Germany party.
