A 51-year-old doctor has gone on trial in Magdeburg charged with six counts of murder and 358 counts of attempted murder linked to last December’s Christmas market attack in the eastern German city.
Amid high security, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a psychiatrist of Saudi origin was led, wearing hand- and ankle-cuffs, into the regional court of Saxony-Anhalt by masked, armed police and placed in a secure glass box.
With a chest-length grey beard and dressed in blue clothing, the accused held up his laptop screen to court photographers with unexplained messages “#MagdeburgGate” and “Sept 26”.
He is accused of driving a rented BMW SUV at speeds of up to 34km/h through the narrow alleyways of the Magdeburg Christmas market just after 7pm on December 24th last. The three-minute attack left a trail of death and injury that shocked the country.
READ MORE
Prosecutors are demanding consecutive life sentences for the accused, arguing the attack was of an “insidious” nature that surprised the victims and was, through the use of a heavy vehicle driven at speed, carried out “with means dangerous to the public”.
Lead prosecutor Matthias Böttcher described in the 30-page indictment how market-goers were knocked down and many revellers were rolled over. Those not killed instantly were left with life-changing injuries. The prosecution argues the accused, who worked at a local clinic, was motivated by anger at German immigration policy and other perceived slights.
Investigators say the accused had planned the attack for months and spotted an unguarded gap in the outer security perimeter for ambulance-use only, that police were not guarding as intended.
The trial is likely to throw light on claims that German security services failed to act on repeated warnings from Saudi intelligence about the man. The trial is one of the largest in German criminal history, with a dedicated high-security courtroom built in Magdeburg.
An additional 177 auxiliary prosecutors are on hand for families of the dead and survivors. Outside the court Marco Gleißner spoke of losing his nine year-old son in the attack: “André was my youngest son. The loss has created endless hurt for me and André’s siblings. I hope that the perpetrator gets his just punishment.”
In the opening minutes of the trial, defence lawyers criticised the “disproportionate” glass box for their client, asking if he was “to be presented in a cage to the world as a wild animal?”.
Presiding judge Dirk Sternberg said the court had provided the glass box, not a cage, “for the defendant’s own protection”.
He has yet to rule on a second motion to replace the defence microphones with models with an on-off switch.
