BERLIN: German security and intelligence chiefs faced questioning on Monday (Dec 30) about the car-ramming attack that killed five people and wounded more than 200 at a Christmas market.
They were to be quizzed about possible missed clues and security failures before the Dec 20 attack in the eastern city of Magdeburg, where police arrested a Saudi psychiatrist, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, at the scene.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, Saxony-Anhalt state officials and the heads of Germany’s federal police and its domestic and foreign intelligence services attended a closed-door committee hearing in parliament, and Faeser was to address the media later.
Abdulmohsen, 50, is the only suspect in the attack in which a rented BMW sport utility vehicle ploughed through the crowd of revellers at high speed, leaving a bloody trail of carnage.
Investigators have yet to declare a suspected motive in the assault that used a motor vehicle as a weapon, a method previously used in attacks including in Berlin and in the French city of Nice in 2016.
Abdulmohsen, by contrast, has voiced strongly anti-Islam views and sympathies with the far right in his social media posts, as well as anger at Germany for allowing in too many Muslim war refugees and other asylum-seekers.
According to media reports citing unnamed German security sources, he has in the past been treated for mental illness and tested positive for drug use on the night of his arrest.
Abdulmohsen has been remanded in custody on five counts of murder and 205 counts of attempted murder, prosecutors said, but so far not on terrorism-related charges.
