It was last Friday evening that a man drove into a crowd at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, killing five people, a nine-year-old boy and four women. About 40 people were also seriously injured.
Since last Saturday, the 50-year-old doctor Taleb Abdul Jawad has been in custody, suspected of the five murders and 205 attempted murders. Information is now emerging that the German police previously carried out a risk assessment of the man, but did not choose to act according to the newspaper World.
TV4 Nyheternas foreign reporter Jona Källgren says that the man had contact with the police several times, including in 2013 when he was convicted of illegal threats.
– Just a few days before the crime, he was to appear in a court in Berlin, where he stood accused of calling the German 112 emergency number too many times and reporting threats and various things without basis, says Jona Källgren.
Did a risk assessment last year
According to police sources with whom Welt has been in contact, German police must have carried out a risk assessment of the man during the last year. There it was concluded that the man’s statements and behavior did not constitute any concrete danger.
“Just because German security authorities receive tips from abroad or threats are made on social networks, it does not mean that the police can deal with all this immediately,” Jochen Kopelke, federal chairman of the police union (GdP) told Welt.
Rainer Wendt, the president of the German Police Association, has also commented on the matter.
“It is doubtful whether the warnings before the crime would have given sufficient reason for police intervention. The police cannot even monitor every Islamist threat that they know could lead to an attack.”
Was warned by Saudi Arabia
The Saudi Arabian embassy has also warned German authorities about Taleb Abdul Jawad on repeated occasions between 2023 and 2024, according to Welt. The warnings came after the man made posts on social media that prompted Saudi Arabia to demand that the man be extradited to the country.
Among other things, the man is said to have written that Germany is looking for people like him and that he would kidnap the Saudi ambassador. In one of his posts on social media, the man asked if anyone knew of another path to justice than, for example, randomly attacking German citizens.
On Saturday evening, Magdeburg’s residents gathered in a mourning service, where candles were lit to the tune of the cathedral’s great bell. And in the midst of the shock and grief, the consequences of the act are also visible in politics.
– It’s an election campaign and you can tell. All parties try to position themselves a little. Don’t use this, but position yourself in the right way to deal with how this act will have an impact on the election campaign, says Jona Källgren.
Today 08:16