“WEAKEST LINK”
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has vowed that “no stone will be left unturned” in shedding light on what information had been available on Abdulmohsen in the past.
She stressed that the attacker did “not fit any previous pattern” because “he acted like an Islamist terrorist although ideologically he was clearly an enemy of Islam”.
The Association of German Criminal Police Officers warned that “it is still too early to draw hasty conclusions or even to formulate political demands”.
German Christmas markets – among the country’s most iconic and beloved festive events – have been specially secured since a jihadist attacker rammed a truck through one in Berlin in 2016, killing 13 people.
Police have also stepped up weapons checks following several deadly knife attacks, including one that killed three people and wounded eight at a summer festival in the western city of Solingen.
The suspect, a 26-year-old Syrian man with suspected links to the Islamic State group, had evaded attempts to deport him.
The Magdeburg market too had been secured with police and heavy barricades, but the attacker managed to exploit a five-metre gap when he steered his rented BMW sport utility vehicle into the site and then raced into the unsuspecting crowd.
“A security concept is only as strong as its weakest link,” counterterrorism expert Peter Neumann told news weekly Der Spiegel. “If one entry point remains unprotected, all the other concrete bollards are of no use.”
