Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the authorities can “say with certainty that the perpetrator was obviously Islamophobic.”
The chief prosecutor said the suspect is in police custody and has made a statement about the motive for the crime, but he declined to give any details about that statement. The investigators “do not yet know whether it was a terrorist attack,” Nopens said.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack Friday evening, right-wing parties seized on reports that the driver was a man from Saudi Arabia. The incident took place almost eight years to the day after a terrorist drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin.
Migration has become a huge issue in Germany, which took in large numbers of refugees from Syria under former Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2015. With external commentators from Elon Musk, an adviser to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, to Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, already commenting on Friday’s tragedy, it has the potential to steer the debate even further in that direction.
Several German media outlets identified the alleged attacker before prosecutors confirmed his name. WELT, a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer group, said the Saudi Arabian was granted refugee status in 2016.
‘Using dirty tricks’
German media also reported that the alleged attacker was an AfD supporter. In 2019 interviews with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Frankurter Rundschau, Abdulmohsen described his online anti-Islam advocacy and initiatives to help Saudis apply for asylum. “I am the most aggressive critic of Islam in history. If you don’t believe me, ask the Arabs,” he said.
