Taleb Jawad Al-Abdulmohsen. That is the name of the main suspect in the attack that occurred Friday night at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany.
The 50-year-old subject is in the custody of the authorities after having been arrested and charged with the murder of five people, including a 9-year-old boy and four women, and the attempted murder of the hundreds of injured people left by the tragedy in the European country.
It is believed that he was the one who entered the tourist market in a BMW car on Friday night and intentionally ran over the celebrating crowd.
But what is known about him and his possible motivations?
A refugee in Germany
The suspect was born in 1974 in Saudi Arabia to a Shiite family in the village of Hofuf, in Al Ahsa province, in the east of that country.
Al-Abdulmohsen arrived in Germany in 2006 and in 2016 he was recognized as a refugee after declaring himself an atheist and requesting asylum.
I ran a site web whose goal was to help other ex-Muslims flee persecution in their home countries.
According to local media, the man had been working since March 2020 as a psychiatrist in a specialized rehabilitation clinic for criminals with addictions in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers south of the city where the tragedy occurred.
“Since the end of October 2024, he has been absent due to vacation and illness,” the health center said in a statement.
The Reuters news agency published that the suspect lived on a quiet street in the center of Bernburg, a city of 30,000 inhabitants, in a three-story apartment building.
An official who spoke on condition of anonymity to the Washington Post said police were searching the suspect’s home and believed he may have been under the influence of drugs at the time of the attack.
Possible motivations
The alleged attacker has no known links to Islamist extremism. In fact, their social media and posts seem to suggest that He had been critical of Islam.
In a BBC documentary from July 2019, the subject appears talking about the founding of the platform wearesaudis.net, from where he supported other persecuted ex-Muslims.
In those interviews, as reported by Reuters, the man strongly criticized Islam. Furthermore, in June of that year he told the German newspaper FAZ: “There is no such thing as good Islam.”
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser did not want to address Al-Abdulmohsen’s motivations or political affiliations, but acknowledged that his Islamophobia was quite “evident.”
For his part, Magdeburg’s local prosecutor, Horst Nopens, stated that a possible factor in the attack may have been the suspect’s “dissatisfaction with the treatment of Saudi refugees in Germany.”
“He is a psychologically disturbed person.”with an exaggerated sense of self-importance,” Taha Al-Hajji, legal director of the Berlin-based European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, told the AFP news agency.
“This is not at all an Islamist-motivated attack,” he added.
Hajji told AFP that, despite the support he provided to Saudi asylum seekers in Germany, Al-Abdulmohsen was considered “a pariah” in that community.
The same media reported that last August, the suspect posted a disturbing message on social media:
“Is there a path to justice in Germany without blowing up a German embassy or randomly massacring German citizens? I have been looking for a peaceful path since January 2019 and have not found it. If anyone knows him, please let me know.”
In that same post, the subject questioned what he considered “crimes committed by Germany against Saudi refugees and obstruction of justice, no matter how much evidence was presented to them.”
As reported by local media, Al-Abdulmohsen’s social media profiles also shed some light on his political and ideological affiliations.
In several of his publications, the man expressed his support for the far-right and anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany.
Likewise, as reported by Reuters, the subject made public his adherence to the ideas defended by American billionaire Elon Musk, who has been critical of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Previous warnings
A source close to the Saudi government told the BBC that Saudi Arabian authorities had sent four official notifications known as “notes verbales” to German authorities, warning them of what they considered “very extreme views” of Al-Abdulmohsen.
The source, who asked not to be named, said these notifications were ignored by the German government.
“They were told that some of their statements were problematic and could be a threat,” an anonymous source told the Washington Post.
Sources close to the Saudi government have conveyed their suspicion that Germany has not taken into account the warnings made about him and has taken them as a simple complaint by the Saudis about an alleged political opponent.
However, another experienced counterterrorism expert told the BBC that the Saudis could be mounting a disinformation campaign to discredit someone who tried to help ex-Muslims apply for asylum.
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- 5 dead, including a child, and hundreds injured run over at a Christmas market in Germany