Magdeburg’s Christmas market is now a crime scene

Numbed by the cold and the events of the past twelve hours, a few Magdeburg residents walk through the city center just after six on a Saturday morning – most of them on their way to the Alter Markt stop where the first trams arrive. A little further on, a young man zooms across Ulrichplein on a scooter, where a tram, a fountain and a violinist made of Christmas lights shine as if nothing had happened. The rest of the city, which has more than 240,000 inhabitants, is also festively illuminated all night long.

This is the center of the Christmas party every year, says a woman who walks her dog and does not want to give her name. She points to the area further away, where stands have been set up between sturdy shop buildings. It is completely fenced off with fences and red-white ribbon. The Magdeburg Christmas market is a crime scene of hundreds of square meters that is closely guarded by police officers who sternly address overly curious people.

Rented car

Just after seven o’clock on Friday evening, a fifty-year-old Saudi-born doctor drove a rented car at high speed for hundreds of meters through the Christmas market. According to Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, at least two people were killed and more than sixty people were injured. Emergency services workers spent hours treating people with injuries on site. The death toll may rise, fifteen people have been seriously injured.

Film footage shows how the police arrested the suspect Taleb A. near the market. Because there was a suspicious package in his car, this part of the city was immediately cordoned off for fear of a bomb, but that turned out to be a false alarm. The authorities are talking about a “suspected attack”. It is still unclear whether there was a terrorist act, only suspicions are circulating about the perpetrator’s motive.

The German newspaper Die Welt reports that Taleb A. has been very critical of Islam on social media. “There is no such thing as good Islam,” he told the newspaper in 2019 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Taleb A. has lived in Germany since 2006, where he works as a doctor with a permanent residence permit.

It is not the first time that a Christmas market in Germany has been hit by violence. In 2016, an Islamic extremist drove his truck into visitors to a Christmas market in Berlin. Thirteen people were killed. Since then, the many hundreds of Christmas markets in Germany have been strictly guarded and secured with special concrete barriers. According to German media, that type of security had also been installed in Magdeburg. It is still unclear how Taleb A. managed to circumvent this security.

Early elections

The attack comes at a politically sensitive time. Germany is preparing for early elections on February 23, after the fall of the cabinet of social democrat Olaf Scholz. The current Chancellor described the attack as “alarming” and will visit Magdeburg on Saturday. Scholz is expected to make way for Christian Democratic party leader Friedrich Merz after the elections.

The far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) achieved good results in the last state elections and is in good shape nationally. The question is whether, and indeed how, the attack in Magdeburg will influence the mood in the country. The police investigation should provide clarity in the coming days about Taleb A’s motivations.

There is no doubt that he was in the car, but what was his motive? Is this a religiously motivated act of terrorism? Or did he just want to express his aversion to Islam, which he talked about in posts on social media? According to Die Welt, he previously campaigned for the AfD for that reason.

The residents of Magdeburg are not yet concerned with this on Saturday morning. The woman with her dog says that she has not yet processed the events of the night before. “I have no words for this,” she says. “I am in shock.”

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