Germany pledges security inquest after Christmas market attack / Photo: John MACDOUGALL - AFP
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Germany pledges security inquest after Christmas market attack
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government on Sunday pledged to investigate whether security services could have prevented the Christmas market car-ramming attack that killed five people and injured over 200.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser and the heads of the domestic and foreign intelligence services will face questioning by two parliamentary committees on December 30, after opposition parties had demanded quick answers.
The Saudi man arrested at the scene of the attack, 50-year-old psychiatrist Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, had made online threats to kill German citizens and had a history of court appearances and quarrels with state authorities.
News magazine Der Spiegel, citing unnamed security sources, said the Saudi secret service had warned Germany's spy agency BND a year ago about a tweet in which Abdulmohsen threatened Germany would pay a "price" for how it treated Saudi refugees.
Faeser promised the Bild newspaper that "the investigative authorities will clarify all the background. They will also examine in detail what information was available in the past and how it was followed up."
Citing security sources, Die Welt daily reported that German state and federal police had carried out a "risk assessment" on Abdulmohsen last year but concluded that he posed "no specific danger".
- 'Blood and screams' -
The city of Magdeburg has been in deep mourning over the mass carnage on Friday evening, when an SUV smashed through a crowd at its Christmas market, killing four women and a nine-year-old child and injuring 205 people.
Of those hospitalised, around 40 were in critical condition. Surgeons have worked around the clock, and one health worker told local media of "blood on the floor everywhere, people screaming, lots of painkillers being administered".
Scholz on Saturday condemned the "terrible, insane" attack and made a call for national unity, at a time Germany is headed for early elections on February 23.
But as German media dug into Abdulmohsen's past, and investigators gave away little, criticism rained down from opposition parties.
Conservative CDU lawmaker Andrea Lindholz charged that the attack "raises questions about the authorities' knowledge of warnings from home and abroad. These questions must be answered this year."
The far-right AfD demanded a special session of parliament, and the head of the far-left BSW party, Sahra Wagenknecht, demanded that Faeser explain "why so many tips and warnings were ignored beforehand".
Mass-circulation daily Bild asked: "Why did our police and intelligence services do nothing, even though they had the Saudi on their radar?... And why were the tips from Saudi Arabia apparently ignored?"
It charged that "German authorities usually only find out about attack plans in time when foreign services warn them" and called for sweeping reforms after the election for a complete "turnaround in internal security".
Senior MP Dirk Wiese of the ruling Social Democrats confirmed the December 30 hearings.
They will summon the heads of the BND, the domestic intelligence service BfV and the Office for Migration and Refugees as well as Tamara Zieschang, state interior minister of Saxony-Anhalt.
- 'Ultra-right conspiracy ideologies' -
Abdulmohsen has in the past called himself a "Saudi atheist" who helped women flee Gulf countries and complained that Germany was doing too little to help them.
He also criticised Germany for allowing in too many Muslim migrants and backed far-right conspiracy theories about the "Islamisation" of Europe.
A harsh critic of Germany's welcome to migrants under ex-chancellor Angela Merkel, he wrote on X that he wished she could be executed.
Der Spiegel reported that in 2013 a court fined him for "disturbing the public peace by threatening to commit crimes" after he had darkly referenced the deadly attack on the Boston marathon.
He had been on sick leave since late October from his workplace, a clinic near Magdeburg that treats offenders with substance addiction problems.
The chairwoman of the group Central Council of Ex-Muslims, Mina Ahadi, said Abdulmohsen "is no stranger to us, because he has been terrorising us for years".
She labelled him "a psychopath who adheres to ultra-right conspiracy ideologies" and said he "doesn't just hate Muslims, but everyone who doesn't share his hatred."
A.Belloli--LDdC
