By Tanja Daube and Martin Schlicht
MAGDEBURG, Germany, June 26 (Reuters) – A Saudi doctor was sentenced to life in prison in Germany on Friday for killing six people and injuring hundreds, after he rammed a rented BMW into crowds at a historic market in the eastern city of Magdeburg days before Christmas in 2024.
The defendant, identified as Taleb A. in accordance with German privacy laws, was a psychiatrist originally from Saudi Arabia, described by officials as having a history of anti-Islamic rhetoric and far-right sympathies.
The attack shocked the country and stirred up tensions over the charged issue of immigration, months before a general election that was held in February 2025.
“Throughout the entire trial, the defendant displayed behaviour indicative of a narcissistic personality disorder, a diagnosis also confirmed by the expert witness,” court spokesperson Christian Loeffler said in a statement.
“This means he places himself at the centre of everything. He sees only himself and not the suffering of other people.”
Prosecutors charged the man with murdering six people and the attempted murder of hundreds more in an attack they say lasted one minute and four seconds and was planned over several weeks. Five women aged 45 to 75 and a 9-year-old boy were killed.
The defendant appears to have acted out of dissatisfaction and frustration over the outcome of a civil law dispute and his lack of success in various criminal complaints, prosecutors have said, believing him to have acted alone.
The court imposed a life sentence with a finding of “exceptional gravity”, which means a person will generally not be eligible for parole after the usual 15 years and faces a significantly longer period in prison.
ACTIVIST IN EXILE
The defendant had worked as a psychiatrist at a specialist rehabilitation clinic for criminals with addictions in Bernburg, around 40 km (25 miles) from Magdeburg, since March 2020, but had been absent due to holiday and illness since the end of October 2024.
Initially, the attack drew comparisons on social media to an Islamist-influenced immigrant’s deadly attack on a Berlin Christmas market in 2016, but the focus quickly shifted to the defendant’s invective against Islam.
He had appeared in a number of media interviews in 2019, reporting on his activist work helping Saudis who had turned their backs on Islam to flee to Europe, though a Saudi exile group reported clashing with him, saying he was isolated and had problems working with others.
In a BBC documentary from July 2019, he spoke about founding the platform wearesaudis.net after he became an atheist and claimed asylum in Germany.
Local media reported that the defendant expressed scant remorse, rambled and was asked by the judge to be brief during the trial.
The court spokesperson on Friday said the defendant had been removed from the proceedings whenever he failed to behave properly, and when he went on hunger strike and declared himself unfit to stand trial, the proceedings continued in his absence.
The defendant had also left video messages on his X social media account on the day of the attack.
In rambling commentary, he variously blamed Germany’s supposed liberalism for the death of Socrates, an ancient Greek philosopher, and accused police of stealing a USB stick from him and destroying a criminal complaint he had filed.
Holger Muench, president of the federal criminal police office, said Germany had received a warning from Saudi Arabia as far back as 2023 about the defendant, which authorities investigated but found vague.
A large number of affected individuals joined the trial proceedings as joint plaintiffs, represented by around 40 lawyers. A special temporary court building had to be built to accommodate them in Magdeburg, where the defendant stood in a glass enclosure on Friday, guarded by masked men.
(Writing by Matthias Williams, Editing by Friederike Heine, Milla Nissi-Prussak and Ros Russell)
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