ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
More details are emerging about the identity of the man who drove an SUV into a Christmas market in a German city, killing five people and injuring at least 200. Police say he moved to Germany in 2006 from Saudi Arabia and worked as a psychiatrist. They also say he campaigned against Islam on social media. There are questions about why police ignored warnings about the man. Rebecca Collard in Berlin has the story.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting in German).
REBECCA COLLARD, BYLINE: The city of Magdeburg in eastern Germany has become the site not just of mourning, but also of protest. Not far from Magdeburg's cathedral, which now hosts a sprawling makeshift memorial of flowers and candles, supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, the AFD, gathered on Monday evening.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting in German).
COLLARD: They chant "remigration," a term used to describe returning immigrants, refugees and even Germans with what they call a migration background to their country of origin.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting in German).
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Alice Weidel.
COLLARD: At the protest, AFD leader Alice Weidel, who will be the party's candidate for chancellor in the upcoming elections, addressed the crowd.
ALICE WEIDEL: (Speaking German).
COLLARD: "We came together just one day before Christmas," she tells them, "to mourn the victims of this crazy attack, done by an Islamist full of hate."
But police are finding a more complicated picture. They say, if anything, the suspect claimed, especially on social media, to be an anti-Islamist. On Friday evening, a man driving a rented SUV plowed into a packed Christmas market in Magdeburg, leaving behind a trail of deadly destruction and shocking the nation. Police have identified the suspect with his first name, Taleb, and his last initial, A, as is normal in Germany for those accused of crimes. He has now been charged with five counts of murder and multiple of attempted murder for the some 200 people injured in the attack. And what's become clear since Friday's attack is that there were multiple security failures, says Hans-Jakob Schindler, who is senior director at the Counter Extremism Project.
HANS-JAKOB SCHINDLER: Just the physical protection of the Christmas market, where you have barriers all around.
COLLARD: After an attack on a Christmas market in Berlin in 2016, which killed 13 people, security was beefed up at markets this time of year. Many have concrete barriers and a heavy police presence.
SCHINDLER: But there is, of course, a security escape route that's supposed to have been blocked by a police car, but wasn't blocked by a police car.
COLLARD: But the bigger question has been about the various warnings given about the suspect, not just by Saudi officials, but also complaints made by people like Mina Ahadi of the German Council of Ex-Muslims, an organization that supports people in Germany who have left the Islamic faith.
MINA AHADI: (Speaking German).
COLLARD: She says that the suspect donated 500 euros to her organization, but then things got weird. He asked for the money back, which she says they honored. But then she says he started harassing and threatening them, and eventually, she went to the police.
AHADI: (Speaking German).
COLLARD: "We passed on to the authorities that he was a dangerous person," she says.
And expert Schindler says the suspect didn't fit the profile that security services look for.
SCHINDLER: It's this weird thing - an Islamophobe who kills Germans, not Muslims, using a Islamist terrorist known attack methodology, right? So it just falls between all of the neat boxes, but it is not a neat category.
COLLARD: For NPR News, I'm Rebecca Collard in Berlin. 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.