Death trip to the Christmas market: Suspected perpetrator: doctor, critic of Islam and fan of Musk

On social networks he presented himself as a vehement critic of Islam and Saudi Arabia: But recently he also expressed criticism of the German authorities and accused them of “secret operations”. Taleb A., the suspected fatal driver who hit, killed and seriously injured numerous people with a car at the Magdeburg Christmas market, recently underwent a transformation.

According to previous information, the man was not known to the authorities as an Islamist, said Saxony-Anhalt’s Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff (CDU) on the evening of the terrible crime. On social networks, the 50-year-old doctor presented himself as a radical critic of Islam and an activist for the interests of women from Saudi Arabia in particular. Before the crime, Taleb A. had more than 40,000 followers on the “X” platform and had also given several interviews in recent years about the situation of women in Saudi Arabia.

Specialist in Psychiatry

According to Haseloff, Taleb A. came to Germany in 2006. Most recently he lived in Bernburg, a small town almost 50 kilometers from Magdeburg. As a spokeswoman for the operating company Salus said, he worked in law enforcement. He worked with addicted criminals and had been working at the facility since March 2020. “He has not been on duty since the end of October 2024 due to vacation and illness,” the company said in a statement. “We have been supporting the work of the investigative authorities in every possible way since the night hours.” According to information from the dpa, the Ministry of Health of Saxony-Anhalt requested the man’s personal file that night and handed it over to the investigating authorities.

In June 2019, an interview with Taleb A. appeared in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”: “I am the most aggressive critic of Islam in history,” the man said at the time. In addition to his posts on social networks, Taleb A. said he advised women from Saudi Arabia, among others, on asylum issues and also referred their contacts to international media.

Saudi Arabia says it has warned Germany

According to Saudi security circles, Saudi Arabia had warned Germany about the man. The kingdom has requested his extradition. It was said that Germany did not react to this. According to security sources, he came from the city of Al-Hofuf in eastern Saudi Arabia and was Shiite. Only about ten percent of the population in the predominantly Sunni country is Shiite. There are repeated reports of discrimination against Shiites in the country.

“We can only say with certainty that the perpetrator was obviously Islamophobic,” said Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) the day after the crime in Magdeburg. Everything else is the subject of the investigation. The SPD politician emphasized that it was the responsibility of the investigative authorities to decide whether or not there had been warnings in advance.

Help for Saudi women and conspiracy theories

For some time now, the Saudi doctor’s appearance on social networks has changed and has become more aggressive. “I seriously expect to die this year,” said Taleb A.’s X account in May of this year. “I will bring justice at any cost.” The German authorities would block all paths to justice. It was initially not clear whether the Saudi actually wrote all the posts himself. A post that was published on the account around the time of the attack caused irritation.

Only around ten days ago, the American platform “RAIR”, which describes itself as an anti-Muslim grassroots organization, published an interview with the doctor that was more than 45 minutes long. In it, he accuses, among other things, the German police of carrying out “secret operations” and deliberately destroying the lives of Saudi asylum seekers who have renounced Islam. He also expressed himself as a fan of X owner Elon Musk and the AfD, which pursues the same goals as him. At the same time, however, he described himself politically as left-wing. “I’m not right-wing, I’m left-wing.”

The fact that Germany has taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria – the majority of them Muslims – in recent years bothered him, as the video shows. According to dpa information, the doctor himself, who had already been in Germany for ten years at the time, applied for asylum in February 2016, which was decided on in July of the same year. At that time, the Saudi citizen received asylum as a politically persecuted person.