dpa
Magdeburg
The suspect in the deadly car-ramming incident at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg had appeared in seven investigative proceedings in the two years prior to the attack, DPA has learned from security sources.
According to the information, he was the complainant in five cases and the accused in two others between April 2023 and October 2024.
Shortly before Christmas, the man - identified only as Taleb A according to Germany’s privacy laws - drove a car at high speed through the Magdeburg Christmas market, killing five people and injuring almost 300. He remains in custody. Taleb A, a Saudi national, had been working as a doctor in a psychiatric hospital in the town of Bernburg, south of Magdeburg, since 2020, treating addicts who had committed crimes.
Taleb A as the accused Police reportedly launched an investigation after Taleb A posted on X on December 1, 2023, criticizing Germany’s treatment of Saudi asylum seekers and threatening revenge.
Officers tried to speak to him five times about the threat, but were unable to find him at home or at work.
According to a report in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, an attempt to obtain a search warrant was rejected by a judge and the proceedings were later dropped.
Taleb A was also accused of threatening a lawyer who had once represented him, as well as the lawyer’s family and office staff. After a complaint was filed, police visited him at work in hospital on October 4, 2024 to warn him that he was being monitored.
Taleb A as the complainant The suspect also filed five complaints of his own, security sources told dpa. In one case, Taleb A complained that a USB stick containing evidence of crimes committed by Saudi Arabia had been stolen from his letterbox. He also reportedly made a complaint about an association that assists atheist refugees, accusing the employees of sexual misconduct on two occasions.
Two other cases raised by Taleb A concerned alleged threats by the Saudi Arabian government and a defamation case. Police visited him again on September 28, 2023 after he threatened the Cologne public prosecutor’s office over the way it handled a case.
