It deals, for example, with a police vehicle that was not at the designated location at the time of the markets. The Ministry of the Interior of the Federal State of Saxony-Anhalt stated this for the DPA agency on Wednesday.
At the time of the attack, according to the ministry, police vehicles should have been deployed at four designated locations in the vicinity. “According to the current state of the investigation, one police vehicle was located at the taxi parking lot in Ernst Reuter Avenue, and therefore not at the location designated by the police’s operational plan. Why this was the case is the subject of further investigation,” stated the regional interior department.
Issues related to the provision of Christmas markets by their organizer are also analyzed. Specifically, it is what was envisaged by the protection plan in the field of technical security of escape and rescue corridors. “We are investigating whether the organizer implemented these measures and, if not, why he did not do so,” the ministry said.
The department also announced that the prosecutor’s office received a criminal complaint against the city of Magdeburg and the police inspectorate in Magdeburg. This means that the security plan of the organizer of the Christmas markets and the concept of the operative activity of the police, as well as their implementation, could become the subject of a criminal investigation. In this case, the police inspectorate in Halle could take over the investigation.
On Friday, December 20, shortly after 7:00 p.m., a man in a rented vehicle rammed into people on Christmas Eve in Magdeburg. His act left five dead – four adults and a nine-year-old child – and more than 230 injured. The police detained him immediately after the crime.
The perpetrator is 50-year-old Talib al-Abd al-Muhsin, who comes from Saudi Arabia and is a psychiatrist by profession. He has been living in Germany since 2006, and in 2016 he received the status of a political refugee. He has shared extremist views on social media, and Saudi Arabia says it has repeatedly warned German authorities against him.
