Saudi Arabia warned Germany about man held over Magdeburg attack

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Saudi authorities have repeatedly warned Germany about the man who allegedly carried out Friday’s attack on a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg, which left five dead and dozens wounded, according to German security officials.

The officials said Riyadh warned German authorities that the suspected attacker, Talib al-Abdul Mohsen, a Saudi dissident who described himself as a former Muslim, had bragged on social media that “something big will happen in Germany.” It was not clear whether police acted on the warnings.

Al-Abdul Mohsen’s numerous posts on the social networking site

Five people were killed and more than 200 injured on Friday evening when a man stormed a Christmas market in the city of Magdeburg. Al-Abdul Mohsen, the suspect in the attack, was arrested at the scene. Authorities described him as a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who came to Germany in 2006 and worked as a psychiatrist in Bernburg, just south of Magdeburg.

The attack worsened the mood in a country already suffering from a deep economic recession and a period of political uncertainty after the collapse of the fragile three-party coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz in November.

It came almost eight years to the day that an Islamic State fighter rammed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people and wounding 49 in one of the worst terrorist attacks ever in Germany.

Schulz visited Magdeburg on Saturday, calling the incident a “terrible act” and promising that he would “leave no stone unturned” in investigating the crime.

Al-Abdul Mohsen was an activist who publicly renounced Islam after leaving Saudi Arabia and created a website to help opponents of the regime in Riyadh – especially women – flee the country and apply for asylum in Europe.

His interviews and social media posts reveal that he is a hard-line critic of Islam, and has drawn sympathy for the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a far-right party that staunchly opposes Muslim immigration.

In recent months, he has become increasingly hostile to Germany, criticizing strict hate speech laws that prohibit incitement against certain religious or ethnic groups.

He gave extensive interviews to German newspapers about his activism in 2019, and described himself to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper as “the most aggressive critic of Islam in history.” He said: If you do not believe me, ask the Arabs.

“After 25 years in this field, you think nothing can surprise you anymore,” Peter Newman, a terrorism expert at King’s College London, wrote on X. But a 50-year-old former Saudi Muslim living in the UK.” “East Germany loves the AfD and wants to punish Germany for its tolerance towards Islamists – and that was really not on my radar.”

In an interview in 2019, he said that he “broke” with Islam in 1997.

He said: “I found life in Saudi Arabia an ordeal. You have to pretend to be a Muslim and follow all the rituals.” “I knew I could no longer live in fear, and when I realized that even anonymous activity would put my life at risk as a former Saudi Muslim, I applied for asylum.”

In the other case, he said he wrote posts criticizing Islam on an online forum run by imprisoned activist Raif Badawi, and subsequently received death threats.

“They wanted to slaughter me if I returned to Saudi Arabia,” he said. “It didn’t make sense to put myself at risk of having to come back and then get killed.”

In recent months, he has appeared to turn away from political activism and has turned to attacking German authorities, promoting conspiracy theories often associated with the nationalist right. He claimed in some publications that he was being subjected to censorship and persecution by the German authorities.

In a post on X in November, outlining “the demands of the Saudi liberal opposition,” he called on Germany to “protect its borders from illegal immigration.”

It has become clear that Germany’s open border policy was just that [former chancellor Angela] “Merkel’s plan to Islamize Europe,” he wrote. He also called on Germany to repeal sections of the penal code that he claims “restrict….” . . Freedom of expression” by “making it a crime [sic] To insult or belittle religious doctrines or practices.”

His profile shows

In an interview earlier this month on an anti-Islam blog, he accused German authorities of carrying out a secret operation to hunt down former Saudi Muslims while granting asylum to Syrian jihadists.

In recent months, his messages have taken on an increasingly threatening tone. “I assure you: if Germany wants war, we will have it,” he wrote on X day in August. “If Germany wants to kill us, we will slaughter them, die, or go to prison with pride.”