US President Joe Biden on Saturday called the deadly car ramming attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, a “despicable and dark event,” adding that Washington was in contact with German officials.
“The United States extends our deepest condolences to the people of Germany grieving the terrible attack,” Biden said in a statement. “No community — and no family — should have to endure such a despicable and dark event, especially just days before a holiday of joy and peace.”
Suspect in deadly Christmas market attack railed against Islam and Germany
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 policy, official 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 top suspect after an SUV ploughed at high speed through a dense crowd Friday, also injuring 205 people in the eastern city of Magdeburg.
The mass carnage sparked sorrow and revulsion, with a nine-year-old child among the dead and casualties 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.
A self-described “Saudi atheist” who as an activist who helped women flee the oil-rich kingdom, he has railed against Islam but also 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”.
