Tributes have been paid to the nine-year-old boy who was killed in an attack at a Christmas market, as ITV News’ Cari Davies reports
The mother of a nine-year-old boy who was killed in an attack at a German Christmas market has paid tribute to her “little teddy bear”.
André Gleißner was killed after a driver rammed his car into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg on Friday which left at least four others dead and more than 200 injured.
In a post online, Désirée Gleißner said: “Let my little teddy bear fly around the world again… André didn’t do anything to anybody… he was only nine years with us on earth… why two… just why. I don’t understand.”
“You will always live in our hearts…I promise you that,” she added.
The suspect has been identified by authorities as a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian citizen who had been living in Germany for more than a decade and worked as a doctor.
He has since been named by a US activist group as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, who had a history of making anti-Islam statements and said he had helped people, particularly women, flee Saudi Arabia.
Authorities are facing questions over whether the attack could’ve been stopped after they received tipoffs about the suspect from Saudi Arabia last year, but said the suspect did not fit the usual profile of those committing extremist attacks.
German police said they received tips in November 2023 and launched an investigation but said the information was very unspecific.
Holger Münch, head of the Federal Criminal German Police Office, said: “The man also published a huge number of posts on the internet. He also had contact with various authorities, made insults and even threats. However, he was not known to have committed acts of violence.”
The Federal Office for Migration and Refugee said it also received a tipoff about the suspect in summer last year which they said was “taken seriously” like all information they receive.
Chief of the Magdeburg Public Prosecutor’s office, Horst Walter Nopens, said that his office needs more time to determine a motive – but that the suspect may have been unhappy with Germany’s treatment of Saudi refugees.
On Sunday, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said: “This perpetrator acted in an unbelievably cruel and brutal manner — like an Islamist terrorist, although he was obviously ideologically an Islamophobe”.
Police in Magdeburg, the central city where the attack took place on Friday evening, said that the victims were four women ranging in age from 45 to 75, as well as a 9-year-old boy they had spoken of a day earlier.
Authorities said 200 people were injured, including 41 in serious condition. They were being treated in multiple hospitals in Magdeburg, which is about 130 kilometres (80 miles) west of Berlin, and beyond.
The suspect was brought before a judge on Saturday evening, who behind closed doors ordered that he be kept in custody pending a possible indictment.
Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect appears to have been an active user of the social media platform X, sharing dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who had left the faith.
He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he referred to as the “Islamification of Europe.”
The horror triggered by yet another act of mass violence in Germany makes it likely that migration will remain a key issue as Germany heads toward an early election on February 23.
The far-right Alternative for Germany party had already been polling strongly amid a societal backlash against the large numbers of refugees and migrants who have arrived in Germany over the past decade.
Right-wing figures from across Europe have criticised German authorities for having allowed high levels of migration in the past and for what they see as security failures now.
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