Attack on Christmas market in Germany: death toll rises to 5

In the last few hours the death toll from the collective attack in Magdeburg, in the east of Germany, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz described as an “insane act.”

Scholz specified that Germany must be united in the face of what happened and not allow hatred to begin to prevail in the country’s daily life.

“There is no place that represents peace as much as a Christmas market. What a barbaric and insane act it is to break into it to kill and hurt people.“said Scholz in a brief appearance at the scene alongside the Prime Minister of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Hasseloff.

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“In those moments we have to be together, we cannot allow hatred to prevail in our daily lives,” he added.

They ask to apply the full weight of the law

Both Scholz and Hasseloff indicated that everything must be done to investigate what happened and apply the full weight of the law. They also offered help to those affected and those who participated in the relief efforts after the accident.

“I am very grateful to everyone who has helped and prevented something worse. We will leave them alone,” Scholz said.

Meanwhile the death toll has risen to five and The number of injured is estimated at 200, many of them seriously.

What is known about the perpetrator of this crime in Germany?

The alleged perpetrator is a 50-year-old Saudi psychiatrist, identified as Taleb A.and who in the past had acquired some notoriety as a critic of Islam.

The life of Dr. Taleb A, as shown in media such as the magazine “Der Spiegel” or the newspaper “Frankfurter Rundchau”, goes through the abandonment of the Muslim faith, activism in favor of Saudi women and leads to open sympathies for the far right. Alternative for Germany (AfD) and in theories about an alleged plan to Islamize the Euro Cup, concocted according to him by former chancellor Angela Merkel.

Taleb A arrived in Germany in 2006 as a student and received asylum in July 2016 after receiving death threats for turning away from Islam. He lived and worked as a psychiatrist in Bernburg, a small town of 32,000 inhabitants on the banks of the Saale River between Magdeburg and Halle.

As an activist, she informed and advised Saudi women about the possibilities of fleeing their country and had a website with information about the German asylum system.

In an interview he gave in 2009 to the newspaper “Frankfurter Rundschau” He said many Saudi women came to him for protection after being raped by the man they depended on. In that interview she said that the German asylum system was for these women a path to freedom.

In another interview, with the newspaper “Frankfurter Allgemeine” and published in 2009, he defined himself as “the greatest critic of Islam in all of history.”

From a certain point on, the distance he had taken from Islam became an open rejection of German immigration policy. Last November he published a message on his X account with “four demands from the Saudi opposition” and said that Germany had to protect its borders from illegal migration.

He then accused Merkel of having had a plan to Islamize Europe with her open borders policy. In other social media messages he showed open sympathy for the AfD because he said it was the only party that fought Islam in Germany. Taleb A wanted to found together with the AfD an academy for ex-Muslims in Germany, according to “Der Spiegel.”

Already in the biography that he published in his X profile he ended by saying that “Germany wants to Islamize Europe.”

Just a week ago, an interview of his was broadcast through an Islamophobic blog in the US in which he maintained that the German state had a secret operation to persecute ex-Saudi Muslims around the world and at the same time granted asylum to Syrian jihadists. In another message from X, later deleted, he announced revenge, according to the newspaper “Die Welt.”

In recent weeks, according to the local newspaper “Magdeburger Zeitung”, Taleb A had missed work due to medical leave.

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