The German government on Sunday promised a thorough investigation into whether there were safety lapses before a car crashed into a Christmas market, killing five people and injuring more than 200.
Political pressure has built on the question of possible missed warnings regarding Saudi suspect Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old psychiatrist who made online death threats and previously had trouble with the law.
Interior Minister Nancy Feser and the heads of Germany’s domestic and foreign intelligence services are due to answer questions at a parliamentary committee hearing on December 30, a senior lawmaker told AFP.
Feser vowed on Sunday that “no stone will be left unturned” in shedding light on what information was available to security services before last Friday’s bloody attack in the eastern city of Magdeburg.
He stressed that the attacker “does not fit any previous pattern” because “he acted like an Islamic terrorist, although ideologically he was clearly an enemy of Islam”.
Abdulmohsin has in the past called himself a “Saudi atheist” who has helped women flee the Gulf country and alleged that Germany is doing too little to help them.
In online posts, he strongly criticized Germany for allowing too many Muslim refugees and supported far-right conspiracy theories about the “Islamization” of Europe.
In one post he wrote: “Is there a way to get justice in Germany without blowing up the German embassy or randomly killing German citizens?… If anyone knows it, please let me know.”
News magazine Der Spiegel, citing security sources, said the Saudi secret service warned Germany’s spy agency BND about a tweet a year ago in which Abdulmohsin threatened to punish Germany for its treatment of Saudi refugees. “Price” will have to be paid for this.
Die Welt daily, citing security sources, reported that German state and federal police conducted a “risk assessment” on Abdulmohsen last year, but concluded that he posed “no particular threat”.
“Blood and Screams”
The city of Magdeburg is in deep mourning over the mass massacre that occurred on Friday evening, when an SUV plowed into a crowd at its Christmas market, killing four women and a nine-year-old child and injuring 205 people.
Surgeons are working around the clock in overwhelmed hospitals, and one health worker told local media that “there was blood on the floor everywhere, people screaming, lots of painkillers were being given”.
Scholz condemned the “horrible, insane” attack on Saturday and called for national unity as Germany heads toward early elections on Feb. 23.
But as German media dug into Abdulmohsen’s past and investigators provided little information, a volley of criticism came from opposition parties.
Conservative CDU lawmaker Alexander Throm alleged that “many citizens feel… that the Scholz government has been a complete failure in terms of internal security”.
They demanded more police powers to monitor and analyze data from social media platforms, telecommunications and surveillance cameras along with facial recognition technology.
The far-right AfD called for a special session of parliament and Sahra Wagenknecht, head of the far-left BSW party, demanded that Feser explain why “so many suggestions and warnings have already been ignored”.
The mass-circulation daily Bild asked: “Why did our police and intelligence services do nothing, even though they had Saudi on their radar?… And why were Saudi Arabia’s suggestions apparently ignored?”
It alleged that “German authorities usually become aware of attack plans only when foreign services warn them” and called for sweeping reforms to “change internal security” after the election.
Dirk Wiese, a senior lawmaker from Scholz’s Social Democrats, said the heads of the BND, the domestic intelligence service BfV and the office for migration and refugees would be called to the December 30 hearing.
“Ultra-right conspiracy ideologies”
Meanwhile the media reported more details about Abdulmohsen, who worked at a clinic that treated criminals with drug addiction problems, but had been on sick leave since the end of October.
Der Spiegel reported that in 2013 a court fined him for “disturbing the public peace by threatening to commit a crime” after he made a false reference to the deadly attack on the Boston Marathon.
Mina Ahadi, president of the group Central Council of Ex-Muslims, said Abdulmohsen “is no stranger to us, as he has been terrorizing us for years”.
He labeled him “a psychopath who adheres to far-right conspiracy ideologies” and said that he “doesn’t just hate Muslims, but everyone who doesn’t share his hatred.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
