Anti-immigrant anger rises at scene of German market attack

By Matthew Chance and Benjamin Brown, CNN

Magdeburg, Germany (CNN) — Its glühwein stalls, festooned with Christmas lights and tinsel, stand emptied and shuttered.

On the cordoned off market street, in the center of Magdeburg, German police stand guard as, one officer told CNN, forensic teams carefully examine the crime scene before scrubbing the blood stains from the road.

The horrific car-ramming attack on this Christmas market on Friday night left at least five people dead, including a 9-year-old boy, plunging this provincial German city into shock.

At the entrance to the market, grieving locals have lit candles and laid flowers to pay their respects, many feeling a profound sense of loss.

“I’ve seen a lot of misery, many people who were searching. Many tears, bewilderment and extreme states of shock,” said Corinna Pagels, an emergency psychological counselor offering help to those affected.

Amid the grief, the attack has revived memories in Germany of a similar assault in 2016, when more than a dozen people were mowed down and killed at a Christmas market in Berlin.

Back then, it was a 24-year-old Tunisian man, who had failed to gain asylum in Germany and pledged allegiance to the radical jihadists of ISIS, who plowed a truck through the festive crowd, fueling anger and suspicion across Germany towards a recent influx of mainly Muslim immigrants from the Middle East.

This time, the suspect is very different.

Taleb Al Abdulmohsen, 50, was originally from Saudi Arabia, but had lived in Germany since 2006, working as a consultant psychiatric doctor in a local clinic.

He is also an avowed atheist and anti-Islam, once describing himself in a 2019 newspaper interview as “the most aggressive critic of Islam in history.”

On social media, Abdulmohsen expressed support for the German anti-immigration AfD party and repeated his own frustrations with what he saw as the German government’s soft line on immigration, as well as what he believed was Berlin’s overly cordial relationship with the Saudi regime.

Recent messages included threats. In August, Abdulmohsen said that if Germany “wants to kill us, we will slaughter them, die, or go to prison with pride.”

A constant in his feed was his anger at Islam. Germany, Abdulmohsen claimed, wanted “to Islamize Europe.”

But for many Germans in Magdeburg, the fact the latest Christmas market attacker doesn’t fit the expected security profile simply doesn’t matter.

“Our politicians are responsible for this,” one local woman, Barbara, told CNN as she paid her respects outside the police cordons.

“I think there should be a clean-up of people who do these things,” she added.

“Now is time to close our borders,” said a local man, Tom, standing nearby.

German politicians from opposite ends of the political spectrum have seized on the car-ramming to attack the coalition government.

Both share an opposition to mass migration: Far-left party leader Sahra Wagenknecht asked Interior Minister Nancy Faeser “why so many tips and warnings were ignored beforehand.”

Meanwhile the far-right AfD – which has made significant ground this year – organized a rally in Magdeburg on Monday evening, which about 3,500 people took part in, according to local police.

“Anyone who despises – even kills – the citizens of the country that grants them asylum, anyone who despises everything we stand for, everything we love, does not belong to us,” AfD leader Alice Weidel said at the rally, according to local public broadcaster MDR. People in the crowd were chanting “deportation” during her speech.

“We want something to finally change in this country and that we never again have to mourn with a mother who lost her son in such a senseless and brutal way,” Weidel added.

Despite allegedly being committed by a self-confessed Islamophobe, the attack appears to be fueling Germany’s angry anti-immigration mood.

The AfD’s parliamentary chief has also demanded on X a special session be called to discuss security matters in the wake of the attack.

In a different part of Magdeburg city center, thousands gathered for an event on Monday night countering the AfD rally, which took place under the motto: “We want to mourn / Don’t give hate a chance!”

“Everyone deals with this situation in their own way, some are grieving, others are angry. Everyone has the right to express their opinion and this should not be used for any political purposes here,” one local man, Andreas Bohs, told the Reuters news agency earlier on Monday.

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