The deadly attack on December 20 at the Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg – in which five people were murdered and 235 wounded – sparked a heated public, media, and political debate surrounding the problematic and complex personality of the perpetrator, Saudi doctor Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen.
A brief examination of the 50-year-old’s will, left in the car with which he carried out the horrific attack, is sufficient to discern an unstable and inconsistent person, deeply conflicted with himself and his surroundings, who goes to murder innocent people at a Christmas market and bequeaths all his possessions to the Red Cross.
It was convenient for most politicians, journalists, and commentators to cling to the theory that Abdulmohsen was an anti-Islamic Muslim, who spread the messages of the far-right political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), Israeli personalities including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Elon Musk on his X account, to divert attention from the fact that most terrorist attacks on German and European soil in the past 20 years were carried out by Islamists in the name of radical Islam.
The attack in Magdeburg allowed the establishment in Germany and Europe to use this extreme and rare case to launch an organized chorus warning of “generalizations against Muslims,” explaining that “the real problem of terrorism lies on the right side of the political map,” that “its roots should be found in the conflict between nationalist Israel and its neighbors,” and that “we must beware of Islamophobia.”
“Islamophobe” was the term that was almost automatically attached to the perpetrator, although he was described here and there as an “Islam critic” or “anti-Islamic” – descriptions that seemed to better match the profile of the man, which was constructed based on the content of his X account, the website he managed, and the few rare interviews he gave in recent years.
If Abdulmohsen had any phobia, imaginary and uncontrollable or real, it was not related to Islam – which he knew very well – but to Germany, to which he immigrated in 2006 as a medical trainee.
The accusations he directed at the authorities in Germany regarding the persecution of “Saudi refugees,” whom Abdulmohsen allegedly sought to help, now appear to be an imaginary persecution complex that the perpetrator of the Magdeburg attack developed after creating himself various conflicts and entanglements with the German authorities.
Motivation behind revenge
Those incidents seem now to be the real motivation behind his deep urge for revenge against Germans and Germany than his accusations against Germany and former chancellor, Angela Merkel, of “Islamizing Europe.” If he truly feared the Islamization of Europe under Germany’s leadership, Abdulmohsen could have carried out an attack on a Muslim institution or alternatively at one of the public events surrounding the recent release of Merkel’s memoirs.
The number of Saudi asylum-seekers in Germany is very low, despite the fact that the annual report of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees in Germany notes various groups that could have sought asylum in Germany due to their persecution or discrimination by the Saudi authorities, despite the internal reforms process initiated by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
These groups include women, members of religious minorities, the LGBTQ+, community and opposition activists. Did the perpetrator from Magdeburg actually assist his compatriots who sought asylum in Germany? Various testimonies that have emerged on social media since the attack portray Abdulmohsen as a person who was actually in conflict with ex-Muslims, individuals, or organizations representing them. Among other things, he claimed that the German authorities infiltrated organizations of ex-Muslims to spy on them for the benefit of Saudi Arabia.
Germany internal security authorities failed
However, the confrontations that Abdulmohsen had with ex-Muslims, mainly on social media, raised suspicions among those who were threatened by him that the Saudi doctor was actually an undercover agent of the Saudi authorities, spying on critics of the Saudi regime. The Saudi authorities themselves say that they warned the Germans about Abdulmohsen well before he committed the deadly attack.
However, as complex as the personality of Abdulmohsen was, the public focus is turning now to the main scandal behind the attack: the German internal security authorities have failed, once again, in preventing terrible bloodshed despite warning signals they received or should have detected. This security inefficiency, and not the assumed political affiliation of the perpetrator for political needs, should indeed be at the center of the discussion, even if Germany is only two months away from a decisive general election.
There is the failure of police security at the site of the attack: after the deadly truck attack at the Christmas market in Berlin eight years ago, carried out by an Islamist and resulting in the murder of 12 men and women, it was decided to enhance security measures around Christmas markets throughout Germany.
THE ATTACK at the Christmas market in Berlin was far from being an isolated or unprecedented event. A series of attacks, for various motives, were carried out in recent years in the French cities of Dijon and Nantes in December 2014, in Strasbourg in December 2018 (mass shooting, five killed), and in Trier, Germany, in December 2020 (vehicle attack, five killed).
This is in addition to many attacks that were thwarted in advance, such as in the German city of Potsdam in December 2017, when an explosive device loaded with nails was found in the city’s Christmas market before it was activated.The police in Magdeburg had every reason to completely block vehicular access to the Christmas market area as much as possible, yet they left the attacker with an accessible route.
It is still unclear whether the attacker was aware in advance of this security breach, or whether the attacker took on the spot advantage of it. Based on this breach two criminal complaints were filed against the City of Magdeburg, the capital of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, and the local police.
Beyond this failure, a much more serious oversight emerges: the internal security authorities in Germany had enough prior information that should have put Abdulmohsen on their radar. In 2013 and 2015, the perpetrator was involved in incidents that should have raised red flags: at that time, he lived in the northern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where he completed his training as a psychotherapist. In the first incident, he directed threats towards the local medical association after issues arose regarding the recognition of his exam results.
In the second incident, he confronted municipal authority employees in his then-residence city regarding his rights to receive welfare assistance. Abdulmohsen had threatened to take actions that would attract international attention if his demands were not met. Due to the threats against the medical board, the Saudi trainee doctor was sanctioned by a fine.
In February 2015, about a year before Abdulmohsen was recognized by Germany as eligible for refugee status due to his claims of being threatened by the authorities in Saudi Arabia for allegedly leaving Islam, the internal security authorities in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern transferred information about the threatening Saudi to the German Federal Center for the Fight against Terrorism.
The center was established as one of the lessons learned from another security failure of the authorities in Germany: the organization of the September 11, 2001, attacks on German soil, under the nose of the German intelligence agencies, without them noticing it at all.
The center found no reason to include Abdulmohsen on the list of possible suspects in terrorist activities, and thus he was granted refugee status without time limit and the ability to join the German healthcare system.
Until last October, he worked as a psychiatrist in a detention facility and a drug rehabilitation center in the town of Bernburg in Saxony-Anhalt. In the last two months, he went on or was put on sick leave due to psychotic issues he was suffering from. He apparently also had issues with drug use. The health authorities are also verifying if Abdulmohsen was at all qualified to work as a doctor after some of his patients were quoted in media reports saying that he was treating them very unprofessionally.
Abdulmohsen was very active on social media and had tens of thousands of followers on X. Violent and threatening messages he posted on this social network, such as a threat of war against Germany that he published last August, as well as the machine gun appearing above his illustrated profile picture, led followers to complain to the authorities about him.
In October of last year and October of this year, the German police interrogated Abdulmohsen following complaints received against him for threats. However, the conclusion that was reached was that the man was not dangerous – presumably because he presented himself as an anti-Islamist.
The authorities in Saudi Arabia claim that they also warned the authorities in Germany about Abdulmohsen being dangerous and requested his extradition. Just as the assailant at the Christmas market in 2016 managed to deceive the authorities in Germany, this time too, the assailant of Magdeburg slipped under the radar of the authorities, whose inefficiency is becoming increasingly concerning.
Although Abdulmohsen was portrayed in the German media as a “supporter” of the AfD, it does not seem that this exaggerated “political affiliation” has affected the growing popularity of this anti-establishment and anti-immigration party ahead of the upcoming elections of February 23.
Polls conducted after the attack in Magdeburg predict that the party will receive over 19% of the voters’ support, thus becoming the second-largest party in the Bundestag for the first time in its history. Party leader Alice Weidel has become the preferred candidate of the German voters for the chancellorship, and she is leading for the first time over the conservative candidate for the position, Friedrich Merz.
This result only reflects the mood among the German public and has no political significance, as there are no direct elections for the chancellor position in Germany.