On Sunday, a man accused of murdering four women and a nine-year-old boy by driving a car into them at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg has been remanded in custody.
The suspect has been named in local media as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi citizen who arrived in Germany in 2006 and had worked as a doctor. The 50-year-old was brought before a judge on Saturday evening following the incident on Friday when a black BMW car ploughed through the crowded market injuring more than 200 people.
Police said that prosecutors had pressed charges of murder and attempted murder against Abdulmohsen, an anti-Islam activist who has made death threats online against German citizens and has a history of disputes with state authorities.
Al-Abdulmohsen is thought to have driven into the market through an entry point which was reserved for emergency vehicles, police said. Protesters at the rally wore black balaclavas and were filmed holding a large banner with the word “remigration”, a term popular with anti-immigration extremists seeking the mass deportation of migrants and people deemed not ethnically German.
The government is facing growing questions about whether more could have been done to prevent the attack, which injured 205 people, 40 of whom were in a critical condition.
