The suspect in the German car-ramming attack that killed five and injured more than 200 on Friday has been identified as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a self-described member of the “liberal opposition” to Saudi Arabia who has voiced strong anti-Islamic and anti-immigration views.
Two senior U.S. officials familiar with the matter identified al-Abdulmohsen as the suspect.
The car allegedly driven by al-Abdulmohsen plowed 1,200 feet into a crowd in a narrow alley in Magdeburg, a city of about 240,000 people west of Berlin, where shoppers had gathered Friday night. The victims include four adults and a 9-year-old child.
Al-Abdulmohsen, a doctor from Saudi Arabia who lived in Germany, sought asylum there in 2016, citing threats from Saudi Arabia, before working at a clinic as a “specialist in psychiatry.”
But his online activity includes historic and recent inflammatory content on X, and he has been accused of erratic behavior by an NGO for refugees. He has aligned himself with far-right movements such as Germany’s anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, while praising figures like Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders.
Police have not released a motive in the Christmas market attack, but two senior U.S. officials told NBC News authorities are investigating whether the incident is terrorism-related.
Al-Abdulmohsen has been remanded into custody. German prosecutors have said they are planning to file homicide and attempted homicide charges as well as aggravated assault counts, the senior U.S. officials said.
Al-Abdulmohsen’s bio on his X account, verified by NBC News, says, “Germany wants to Islamize Europe.”
In December, he retweeted an X event titled “Islam — a worldwide problem,” and in November, he retweeted a post claiming “Islam is not a religion.” The same month, he also retweeted Alice Weidel, co-chairwoman of the far-right Alternative for Germany, who accused former Chancellor Angela Merkel of causing “serious damage” to Germany, blaming her for “uncontrolled mass immigration.”
In November, al-Abdulmohsen called Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch anti-immigrant Party for Freedom, a “true hero” on X. Wilders has been criticized as Islamophobic for comparing the Quran to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and calling Moroccans “scum.”
After the suspect was revealed by authorities as a Saudi national, but before his anti-Islam, far right politics were publicized, Wilders seized on the incident to add fuel to the polarizing debate on immigration, calling it “another barbaric attack in Europe — this time by a man from Saudi Arabia.”
“They hate us. They despise our values. They kill us. And our children. We have to stand up,” Wilders posted on X, adding, “I’ve been saying it for over 20 years: stop with those open borders.” Wilders has not publicly commented on the incident since.
The German police declined to comment on al-Abdulmohsen’s X account due to the ongoing investigation.
Officials said Friday that al-Abdulmohsen acted alone, which former New York State Homeland Security Advisor Michael Balboni characterized as the “worst case scenario for security officials.”
“This came out of nowhere,” he told MSNBC’s Alex Witt. “You can monitor social media, but for the most part you’re not going to know the timing on this or what they’re going to do.”
In 2019, al-Abdulmohsen told the newspaper FAZ that he left Islam in his early 20s after pretending he was still a Muslim. He explained that when he registered on Twitter, his intent was “only to criticize Islam.”
The Salus clinic at the Bernburg psychiatric hospital confirmed in an email to NBC News that the suspect used to work for it as a specialist in psychiatry and was off-duty since the end of October due to “vacation and illness.”
The NGO Aid for Secular Refugees stated Saturday that “in 2019, members of Secular Refugee Aid filed a complaint with the police following the vilest slander and verbal attacks by (al-Abdulmohsen),” adding it was “unable to find any reason to explain his defamation campaign and the aggressiveness of his accusations.”
Al-Abdulmohsen also posted a video where he used an AI avatar of Elon Musk to criticize the German government for what he said was its suppression of free speech and enabling the abuse of Saudi refugees.
He had previously reposted the tech billionaire, who expressed his support for AfD last week, writing on X: “Only the AfD can save Germany.”
