The man suspected of the terrorist attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany last month, has already appeared in seven other police investigations in the past two years. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported this on Saturday. He was the complainant in five of those cases and the accused in the other two.
Taleb A., a 50-year-old man of Saudi descent, drove into a Christmas market in Magdeburg at high speed just before Christmas. Five people were killed and 300 others were injured.
The man has worked as a doctor in a psychiatric hospital in Bernburg since 2020, where he treated addicts with a criminal past. In one of the seven cases in which his name appears, he threatened his former lawyer, his family and staff. After a complaint was filed, the police visited Taleb A. at his workplace on October 4, 2024, and he received a warning.
The police did not communicate the reason for the visit to the hospital board, said a spokeswoman for the company that runs the institution. In principle, agents are allowed to share personal data of individuals with public and non-public authorities to prevent crimes, but in this case the conditions were not met, according to the researchers.