been ordered into pre-trial detention<\/a>\u00a0on counts of murder, attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm.<\/p>\nUsually at this time of the year, German city centres are full of shoppers and revellers drinking mulled wine, but this year the mood is very different.<\/p>\n
The main Christmas market is cordoned off by tape and surrounded by police vans as armed officers patrol the shops and malls nearby.<\/p>\n
There is sadness in the air in Magdeburg, as well as bafflement and anger, as people ask how could this have happened.<\/p>\n
As Scholz and his colleagues walked out of the cordoned-off market during their visit on Saturday, they were met with booing and heckling and shouts of \u201chau ab\u201d, an extremely aggressive form of \u201cget lost\u201d.<\/p>\n
Some people seemed enraged by a perceived lapse in security. Others appeared simply annoyed and irritated in general at Germany\u2019s political leaders.<\/p>\n
Security has ramped up at Christmas markets across Germany since a similar attack in Berlin in 2016 when a man drove a lorry into a market crowd, killing 12 people.<\/p>\n
Open-plan Christmas markets now have some sort of barrier around them \u2014 typically large concrete blocks, which is the case in Magdeburg.<\/p>\n
However, the gap in the barriers was large enough to allow emergency vehicles to pass through.<\/p>\n
City official Ronni Krug told reporters at a press conference on Saturday that emergency responders needed an evacuation route in case of a \u201cconventional\u201d emergency, and all the relevant agencies approved the plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cA safety and security concept must, on the one hand, protect those visiting an event as much as possible, but also needs to ensure, at the same time, if something does happen, they are able to leave the site safely and rapidly\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps it is something that could not have been prevented\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n
German media reported that before the attack, there had been warnings into a potential threat from the suspect.<\/p>\n
The suspect, a doctor from Saudi Arabia named Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, arrived in Germany in 2006 and in 2016 was recognised as a refugee.<\/p>\n
An atheist, he ran a website that aimed to help other former Muslims flee persecution in their Gulf homelands. His social media was full of anti-Islamic sentiment and conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n
At Saturday\u2019s press conference, Magdeburg police chief Tom-Oliver Langhans said police had conducted an evaluation as to whether the suspect might be a potential threat, \u201cbut that discussion was one year ago\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added that investigations into the suspect\u2019s past were ongoing and declined to comment further.<\/p>\n
Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser told German newspaper Bild that investigators would examine \u201cin detail\u201d what information authorities had on the suspect in the past and how he had been investigated.<\/p>\n
The German Office for Migration and Refugees announced in a post on social media that it had fielded a complaint about the suspect, which it had \u201ctaken seriously\u201d, but as the office is not an investigative body, had referred the complainant to other authorities.<\/p>\n
One tip-off received by authorities is believed to have come from Saudi Arabia, the suspect\u2019s home country.<\/p>\n
A source close to the Saudi government told the BBC it sent four official notifications known as \u201cNotes Verbal\u201d to German authorities, warning them about what they said were \u201cthe very extreme views\u201d held by al-Abdulmohsen.<\/p>\n
However, a counter-terrorism expert told the BBC the Saudis may have been mounting a disinformation campaign to discredit someone who tried to help young Saudi women seek asylum in Germany.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Langhans said he did not have information when asked about Saudi Arabia issuing warnings.<\/p>\n
Later, the head of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), Holger M\u00fcnch, told public broadcaster ZDF that his office had received a notice from Saudi Arabia in November 2023. He said local police took appropriate investigative measures, but the matter was unspecific.<\/p>\n
He added that the suspect \u201chad various contacts with authorities, insulted them and even made threats, but he was not known for violent acts\u201d.<\/p>\n
Past investigations would need to be revisited, M\u00fcnch said.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dec 22 \u2013 German authorities are facing questions about security and what they knew about the suspect accused of using an access lane for emergency vehicles to drive into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing five people and injuring more than 200. On a visit on Saturday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, ministers and regional political […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}