The Saudi perpetrator of the car-ramming attack on the Magdeburg Christmas market, which left 6 dead and more than 300 injured in this German city at the end of 2024, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Friday June 26.
The Magdeburg court (east) also recognized the particular seriousness of Taleb Jawad al-Abdulmohsen’s offense, a qualification which in practice makes early release very difficult. He reserved until later the examination of a possible security detention, requested by the prosecution.
Dressed in jeans and a long shirt, this 51-year-old Saudi psychiatrist with a gray beard listened to the handcuffed judgment in the box of a courtroom built for the occasion, a temporary light structure.
On December 20, 2024, he drove a BMW X3, a compact SUV type car with more than 340 horsepower, into the Old Market Square in the regional capital of Saxony-Anhalt (east). At a busy Christmas market that Friday evening, he would have reached a speed of 48 km/h. A nine-year-old boy and five women aged 45 to 75 died, more than 300 people were injured.
Sympathy for the far right
This attack had strengthened the debate around immigration and increased pressure on the then social democratic chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in the middle of the electoral campaign. It also echoed that of December 2016, when an Islamist killed 12 people by driving a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin.
The day after the attack, the German authorities had on the contrary highlighted the “Islamophobic” profile of Taleb Jawad al-Abdulmohsen, who displayed on social networks his sympathy for the German far-right party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), and his hostility towards Islam.
Arriving in Germany as a refugee in 2006, he was known to the authorities and had notably been fined for threatening crimes. The doctor criticized the German authorities for not sufficiently protecting Saudis fleeing their country for religious or political reasons, and for being, conversely, generous towards Muslim refugees from the Middle East.
According to prosecutor Matthias Böttcher, the accused was seeking “revenge” in particular for a legal failure against a refugee association and for a series of criminal complaints that remained unanswered.
“No remorse”
During the trial, the accused, author of statements that were sometimes confusing and tinged with conspiracy theories, and of a hunger strike which forced the court to continue the proceedings for a time without him, admitted having planned an attack and driving the rental car.
However, he denied intentionally knocking down people. During the 8-month trial, the accused showed “no remorse, no regret or any awareness,” said Matthias Böttcher. An expert psychiatrist diagnosed the accused as having a narcissistic disorder. According to an expert report, he is, however, fully criminally responsible, shows no impairment of his capacity for control or his capacity for discernment, and remains dangerous.
