After the deadly December 20 attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, a suspect was arrested almost immediately.
On the evening of the attack, Saxony-Anhalt’s state premier, Reiner Haseloff, said the suspect was a 50-year-old man from Saudi Arabia who had been living in Germany for 18 years and had likely acted alone when he drove through the crowds.
Several German media outlets quickly identified the man as Talib A.* and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy. Talib A. was practicing in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg, where the attack happened.
The Saudi native was raised a Muslim but left his religion and became an active critic of Islam and its treatment of women, particularly in his homeland.
A trail of hate on social media
Describing himself as a former Muslim and a Saudi dissident, he was an enthusiastic user of the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). He had around 47,000 followers there.
There he posted or re-posted daily mostly on anti-Islam themes. He often criticized the religion and congratulated Muslims who left the faith.
According to an interview he did with the BBC in 2022, Talib A. set up a website called “We Are Saudis” (wearesaudis.net) which he says he used to help Saudi activists and ex-Muslims escape Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. He told the BBC he was often approached by younger Saudi women trying to escape their families.
However the UK’s Daily Telegraph reports that some other dissidents found him too intense and avoided him.
His views veered into Islamophobia and he frequently posted content echoing far-right rhetoric. He often criticized Germany’s migration policy because he claimed it had allowed too many Muslims into the country and blamed Angela Merkel, Germany’s former chancellor, for allegedly allowing that to happen.
In December, he shared a video about Afghan women being banned from medical universities by the Taliban and commented that, “had Merkel achieved her plan, this would have been Germany right now.”
The same day he also posted that, “Merkel must spend the rest of her life in prison as punishment for her criminal secret project to Islamize Europe. But if the death penalty is reinstated, she deserves to be executed.”
This support for the far right and his concerns about Islam in Europe date back to at least 2016.
He became increasingly upset with Germany. “I have to admit that I was deceived by western Leftists,” he wrote in another post on X. “I thought they welcome refugees because they care for human rights. But my experience in Germany showed me that they welcome refugees because they want to Islamise Europe.”
Taleb A. was also supportive of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. “The AfD and I are fighting the same enemy,” he wrote on social media.
He also praised far-right figures like the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and UK extremist Tommy Robinson, as well as X owner, billionaire Elon Musk.
Reaching out to media in Germany
Talib A. actively sought media exposure for his cause. In 2019, he and the website were featured in media reports across Germany, the UK and other countries, including the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper. Talib A. had also been in contact with Deutsche Welle. DW has released this statement about that contact:
“Talib A., the alleged perpetrator of the Christmas Market attack in Magdeburg, was in contact with DW.
In March 2021, the 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia reached out through Twitter. He accused Saudi Arabia and Saudis in Germany of spying on him. He also accused the German authorities of not taking him seriously and not taking any action.
In a message to DW in October 2023, he wrote: “They refused to even open an investigation! On the grounds that there is no public interest. […] They leave a Saudi refugee exposed to intimidation, surveillance and persecution without even conducting an hour-long investigation to get at least a first impression.”
However, many of his claims could not be independently verified by DW.
In November and December 2024, he offered to appear on DW and publicly present evidence. After receiving no reply, he broke off contact.”
Interview: Germany “waging war on ex-Muslims”
Only a few days before the Magdeburg attack, he gave an interview to the RAIR Foundation, a website known for featuring vaccine-skeptical and anti-Muslim content.
Although the RAIR Foundation later replaced the December 12 interview with a completely different text, archived versions of the site show that he gave another similar interview.
“Germany — and much of the West — is not only facilitating the Islamization of their societies but is actively persecuting legitimate refugees fleeing Sharia oppression,” he claimed in the interview. He also alleged that Germany was “waging war on ex-Muslims.”
On his personal X account, he claimed he had evidence of German authorities committing “a series of deliberate crimes against Saudi refugees.”
“I assure you that if Germany wants a war, we will fight it,” he wrote in one post “If Germany wants to kill us, we will slaughter them, die, or go to prison with pride.”
Vehicles as a weapon
Despite Talib A.’s various posts and his increasingly extreme political opinions, German authorities have yet to release information as to what they think his motive was in driving into the Magdeburg Christmas market.
“We can only say with certainty that the perpetrator was obviously Islamophobic,” Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters on Saturday.
There have been a number of similar incidents with vehicles in Germany over recent years. The best-known is likely a terrorist attack on a Berlin Christmas market on December 19, 2016, by Islamist extremist Anis Amri. In that dozens of people were injured and 13 died. Amri was apparently motivated by calls from the extremist “Islamic State” group to carry out low-cost attacks on the West.
But other attacks were linked to mental illness and far-right extremism.
In 2022, a mentally ill man drove into a busy shopping street in Berlin, killing one person. In 2020, another man drove into a crowd celebrating in the small town of Volkmarsen in the state of Hesse. His motivation has never been clarified as he refused to speak to investigators.
*Editor’s note: DW follows the German press code, which stresses the importance of protecting the privacy of suspected criminals or victims and urges us to refrain from revealing the full names of alleged criminals.
