AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
We are learning more details today about Friday's deadly attack on a German Christmas market that killed five people and injured some 200. Dozens were seriously injured. Police arrested a suspect they identified as Taleb A., a Saudi man who's lived in Germany for almost two decades. Reporter Rebecca Collard joins us now from Berlin. Hello.
REBECCA COLLARD, BYLINE: Hi, Ayesha.
RASCOE: What's the latest you've learned about the attack?
COLLARD: So the suspect has now been charged with five counts of murder and, as you said, multiple counts of attempted murder, so 200 - basically, one for every person that was injured in this attack. He's in police custody after being arrested at the scene of the attack. And as you said, they've now confirmed his first name, Taleb, and his second initial, A, which is standard practice here, really, for police not to release the last name of people that are accused of crimes. And as we knew yesterday, he's a 50-year-old man of Saudi Arabian origin living in Germany since 2006. And he worked as a doctor and lived not far - in a town not far from where the attack took place.
German media have also been reporting that Saudi Arabia sent warnings about this man to the German government. And so there's been a lot of questions here about why those reports - which really we don't have a lot of details about - were ignored and not acted on. What we really still don't know is the motive for yesterday's attack. We know that he's from Saudi Arabia, and yesterday, the German interior minister said that he was a known Islamophobe, so really Islamophobic. And reports online say that he had been even posting in support of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, a party which wants to heavily restrict immigration here.
RASCOE: And what is it like now in Magdeberg, the city where this attack took place?
COLLARD: Yeah, you know, Ayesha, this is the weekend, of course, before Christmas. So normally, last night, people would have been packed into this Christmas market. That Christmas market is now closed and other Christmas markets as well. But instead, we saw these massive crowds gathering for a memorial service at the local Cathedral there. And the attendees included German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the country's president Frank-Walter Steinmeyer. There's also this makeshift memorial that's been set up with candles and flowers to mourn the victims.
And last night, there was also a far-right protest in Magdeberg. So police say some 2,000 people attended that protest. Many of them were dressed in black, holding placards and signs, of course. And among the signs, there was this really massive sign, maybe 3 meters - or banner, I should say - maybe 3 meters long, and it said the word re-migration.
Now, re-migration is this term that's used in Germany, mostly by the far right but not exclusively by the far right, to describe sending immigrants, refugees and even Germans that have what they call a migration background - so essentially, people of color - sending those people back to their country of origin.
RASCOE: Now, this attack - I mean, it's quickly becoming political. Federal elections are scheduled for February. Could this attack impact the outcome?
COLLARD: Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. You know, we're eight weeks out now from Germans choosing their new federal leaders. And even before this attack, I can tell you, migration and security were big topics here politically, at the regional level, at the federal level, as well, of course, as Germany's poor performing economy. But security and immigration are constantly things that German politicians and the German public are talking about.
So, you know, this idea I was talking about of re-migration, this talk of mass deportations - that was really a far-right position. But increasingly what we're seeing is politicians from the center here and even from the center-left talk about this idea as well. And so we're seeing this real rise in anti-immigration sentiment almost across the political spectrum. And again, we really don't have clarity about the motive for this attack, but I do think we're gonna see a bit of a scramble from different political forces in this country to kind of shape the narrative around this attack and use it to their benefit in advance of these elections.
RASCOE: That's reporter Rebecca Collard in Berlin. Thank you so much.
COLLARD: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
