German Christmas Market Attack - death toll rises to five

00:00:01 out of the car and onto the ground the black BMW had just smashed through a crowd at speed at a Christmas Market the policeman screams stay down don't move the driver puts his hands behind his back and his face on the road the officer keeps his distance until backup arrives a tradition from the Middle Ages to add light in the dark months the fairy tale experience of the magur Christmas Market ended just after 700 p.m. when the car suddenly rammed into a pedestrianized Alleyway through cues waiting at stalls for mold wine and

00:00:42 Gifts across a 400 met long path of Destruction 205 people were injured 40 of them so seriously officials fear the death toll will rise in the days to come so far it stands at 5 among them a 9-year-old isn't sit on um we're shaking we're full of Sympathy for the families we also hope that nothing has happened to our relatives and our friends just yesterday the country marked 8 years since an Islamic extremist crashed a lorry into a Christmas Market in Berlin killing 12 people one of its legacies the use of

00:01:20 concrete event barriers to help prevent such attacks in magur last night they were painted red and green for the occasion the suspect found a gap intended to allow access for ambulances all of a sudden we heard a muffled noise an engine roaring people were screaming it all happened in a fraction of a second my friend said get out of the way it's coming towards us Tobias Rous isn't just an eyewitness he's a local politician from the farri anti-immigration party alternative for Germany known as afd I hope that this will be assessed

00:01:58 from a political point of view that there will be no bans on speaking and thinking any kind of opinion but that we then take a sober approach and that we simply do what politics is supposed to do namely create security for the population Germany is in the throws of a dramatic election campaign triggered by the collapse of the government of Olaf Schultz and fueled by bitter divisions over migration policies as questions swirled over the suspect's motive the chancellor arrived with condolences and calls for Unity

00:02:29 this political climate puts increased pressure on a swift investigation the suspect Who police have not named is reportedly a 50-year-old Saudi psychiatrist who's been living in Germany for almost two decades local press report he was granted asylum in 2016 and became an anti-islam activist who's defended Saudi women refugees and criticized German authorities for what he calls the islamization of Europe at this point we can only say for sure that the perpetrator was evidently islamophobic we can confirm that

00:03:03 everything else is a matter for further investigation and we have to wait the magur market is closed not stress the authorities because they're giving in to Terror but out of respect for the victims hundreds of whom now face Christmas in hospital instead of at home Danny iSell reporting for us there well I'm joined by H Jacob Shindler who is the senior director of the counter extremism project joining us from Berlin uh thank you very much sir for coming on the program the suspect taleb a he has a

00:03:37 very unusual profile from what we are hearing have you ever come across somebody like this before who has perpetrated an act of such serious harm allegedly we did have cases where conspiracy theorists and this is the category which he most fits into had tried to perpetrate Violent acts in Germany there were attempts to abduct a federal Minister uh last year but this is a very odd and very specific combination of ideological narratives here anti-islamic hatred for Germany that protects him hatred for the sis it's

00:04:18 just a really odd combination and maybe the good news is it's so odd that it's not necessarily A indicative of a new bigger strand or network that would then present a threat of further violence but it's is a very unique set of conspiratorial narrative that this individual was led to violence but it's clear any extremist narrative the end leads to violence and and one of the things that has been reported is that he was upset uh about the German government's treatment of Saudi refugees yes I I read that too look at

00:04:59 the end of the it's really hard to understand any deeply Disturbed individual and any terrorists or mass murderer is at the essence of its core personality a very dist Disturbed individual so so he so he could have just been he could have been a lone actor this could be a case of a deeply Disturbed individual that wasn't necessarily radicalized in the conventional sense uh this would be the good case scenario I mean we at the very very beginning of the investigation um the authority are now taking a fine tooth

00:05:32 comb but in 2023 they had made a risk assessment for him specifically um and came to the conclusion that at that time he was already a deeply an individual that showed very disturbing Tendencies online as by the way millions of others um in in the social media sphere of of these days but he was essentially not very likely at that time to use violence that very obviously had changed as we heard from from Danny's report there is a a fee political situation in Germany at the moment is it possible to tell who

00:06:08 this is likely to to benefit uh and if you could answer briefly yeah it's very clear that the right-wing extremist scene is using this already so first it was anti-islam and then it became clear that he was himself anti-islam and now it's uh again the migration issue obviously they're trying to take advantage of this and hence all of the democratic parties say this hatred was the cause of the attack more hatred is cannot be the solution to this indeed um uh H Jacob Schindler thank you very much indeed for your insats we we

00:06:40 appreciate it

Credit : Channel 4 News