Police and city authorities in Magdeburg have each blamed the other for leaving open a six-metre entrance to the city’s central market prior to this month’s car-ramming attack, despite warnings that the move was in breach of the event’s security protocol.
Five people were killed and more than 200 injured on December 20th when an SUV was driven at speed through the market in the eastern German city. Minutes after the attack, police detained a 50-year-old Egyptian-born psychiatrist at the scene.
The man, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, spent Christmas in prison on remand as discussion turned to why a speeding car was able to access the market despite a detailed security plan to exclude unauthorised vehicles.
A copy of the market security blueprint, leaked to the Bild tabloid, shows that the original emergency entrance used by the driver was planned to be four metres wide and blocked at all times by a large vehicle and a steel chain. “This allows flexible access for permitted vehicles such as ambulances and fire brigade,” it says.
Drugs, scams and sin: Myanmar’s war has made it the global crime capital
‘It doesn’t seem real’: Residents of Jimmy Carter’s hometown celebrate a life well lived
Newborn freezes to death in Gaza as thousands of displaced face winter cold and heavy rain
The priceless Lebanon heritage sites destroyed by Israeli bombing
In reality the gap was six metres wide, and no vehicle was positioned at the entrance. Immediately before the attack, and in the days previously, market visitors recalled seeing a large police van parked 50m away.
[ Flowers, candles and a deathly silence at Magdeburg Christmas marketOpens in new window ]
Plans to stretch a steel chain across the entrance were abandoned, city officials said, as the concrete barriers delivered had no catches to hold chains.
The leaked plan states that all market operators are aware of and have consented to trading with the security plan. The city-owned market organising firm and the city itself, which authorised the market, have yet to explain whether they adhered to their responsibilities in the plan.
According to Magdeburg’s Volksstimme daily, organisers alerted the police about the critical gap three weeks before the attack.
The email from November 29th to local Magdeburg police emergency services complains that police vans have been parked “incorrectly”.
In the Hartstrasse area, where the driver accessed the market, “the vehicles are sometimes parked in the wrong position”, the email adds. “I spoke to the colleagues nicely and they told me that they had no information about operations here.”
The market organiser told the Magdeburg newspaper he had not received a reply to his email.
At a post-attack press conference, city officials suggested the gap should have been filled by a police vehicle. The leaked security plan makes no mention of the police supplying the vehicle.
Even before the police investigation has been completed, three criminal cases have been filed against the market operators and the city government, according to local broadcaster MDR.
While the chief suspect faces five charges of murder and dozens of attempted murder, unnamed city officials face allegations of negligent homicide through omission.
Attention is growing, too, on whether federal police and migration authorities ignored warnings – including from Saudi Arabia – that the suspect was planning violent attacks in Germany, where he had lived since 2006.
In a Bundestag parliamentary hearing on Monday, officials from the BND domestic intelligence confirmed receiving information about the suspect on three occasions – twice in 2023 and once in 2024 – but declined to elaborate on the message contents.
Federal interior minister Nancy Faeser told the committee she was, as yet, unable to present a chronology of reports and investigations by the federal police and intelligence services into the suspect.
Green Party MP Konstantin von Notz told the committee the finger-pointing and deflection since the Magdeburg attack was “not on” and reminded him of the aftermath of the 2016 Berlin Christmas market attack that saw 13 killed, and the 2010 Love Parade disaster in Duisburg, in which 21 people were crushed to death. In neither case, despite serious failings and warnings, were criminal charges ever filed against organisers or police.
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Join The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Listen to our Inside Politics podcast for the best political chat and analysis
