MAGDEBURG, Germany (news agencies) — German authorities received a warning last year about the suspected perpetrator in a car attack at a Christmas market, a government office said Sunday as more details emerged about the five people killed in the attack.
“This was taken seriously, like every other of the numerous tips,” the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees said Sunday on X about the tip it said it received in the late summer of last year.
But the office also noted that it is not an investigative authority and that it referred the information to the responsible authorities, following the procedure in such cases. It gave no other details about the suspect or the nature of the warnings.
Police in Magdeburg, the central city where the attack took place on Friday evening, said Sunday that those who died were four women aged 45, 52, 67 and 75, as well as a 9-year-old boy they had spoken of a day earlier.
Authorities said 200 people were injured, including 41 in serious condition. They were being treated in multiple hospitals in Magdeburg, which is about 130 kilometers (80 miles) west of Berlin, and beyond.
Authorities have identified the suspect in the Magdeburg attack as a Saudi doctor who arrived in Germany in 2006 and had received permanent residency.
The suspect was on Saturday evening brought before a judge, who behind closed doors ordered that he be kept in custody pending a possible indictment.
Police haven’t publicly named the suspect, but several German news outlets identified him as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.
Describing himself as an ex-Muslim, the suspect appears to have been an active user of the social media platform X, sharing dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who had left the faith.
He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he referred to as the “Islamification of Europe.” He also appears to have been a supporter of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party.
The horror triggered by yet another act of mass violence in Germany make it likely that migration will remain a key issue as German heads toward an early election on Feb. 23.
Right-wing figures from across Europe have criticized German authorities for having allowed high levels of migration in the past and for what they see as security failures now.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is known for a strong anti-migration position going back years, used the attack in Germany to lash out at the European Union’s migration policies and described it as a “terrorist act.”
At an annual press conference in Budapest on Saturday, Orbán insisted that “there is no doubt that there is a link between the changed world in Western Europe, the migration that flows there, especially illegal migration and terrorist acts.”
Orbán vowed to “fight back” against the EU migration policies “because Brussels wants Magdeburg to happen to Hungary, too.”
Gera reported from Warsaw, Poland. Bálint Dömötör contributed from Budapest.
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