Among the deceased are four adults and a child under nine years old.
Dec. 21 () –
The German Prosecutor’s Office has charged five counts of murder and 205 counts of attempted murder to the suspect arrested on Friday for running over hundreds of people at the Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, an attack that has resulted in five deaths and more than 200 injured. Among the deceased are four adults and a child under nine years old, according to the latest official information.
The motive of the attacker, who for the moment has not been identified by any official source, would be “discomfort with the treatment of Saudi refugees in Germany”, although investigations continue in this regard, explained prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens in a conference. press collected by German media. Nopens has highlighted that the attacker acted alone.
The Police have also confirmed that they are working with the hypothesis of an attack by a solitary individual because the investigation data “rules out” a second person involved, said the head of the Magdeburg Police, Tom-Oliver Langhans. In addition, he highlighted that the suspect took advantage of the emergency route to enter the Christmas market area and that he was arrested in just three minutes from the start of the attack.
The official toll of injuries stood at 205 on Saturday afternoon, with 41 of them serious or critical, so new deaths “cannot be ruled out”, as explained by the city’s security advisor, Ronni Krug, who has defended the town’s security plan, revised in November. “It was modified with improvements in November, on November 24, after the Solingen knife attack,” he stressed.
Krug has also explained that the Christmas market will not be reopened this year as a gesture for the victims of this attack, some of whom “are torn between life and death.” “We cannot have a Christmas market this year” and the Lichterwelt light show will not take place either, he explained. These lights could soon be recovered because “the light is a symbol of hope and may guide people in the right direction and show them that life goes on, that life must go on,” Krug added.
All public buildings in Saxony-Anhalt will fly their flags at half-mast as a sign of mourning and at 7:00 p.m. there will be a commemorative mass in Magdeburg Cathedral, as confirmed by Mayor Simone Borris.
SUSPECT DATA
The driver of the vehicle, who has been detained, is, according to German security sources, a Saudi citizen, a 50-year-old specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy with a permanent residence permit because he was recognized as a refugee in Germany in 2016.
The same sources pointed out that he had worked in a Bernburg prison managed by the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt to care for addicted criminals and that publications on social networks point to an Islamophobic tendency.
Saudi government sources have assured the DPA agency that the German authorities were warned about the individual, “Taleb A.”, whom they identify as a Shiite, a minority in the Arab kingdom, born in the town of Al Hofuf, in the east. of the country.
According to DPA, approximately a year ago a kind of warning was issued about the man to the German authorities for his radical tendency, presenting himself as an activist critical of Islam and who defines himself as an “ex-Muslim.”
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