The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has organized what it calls a “commemorative” demonstration for the victims of a vehicle attack at a Christmas market that ignited debate on politics, migration and security.
The rally was held on Monday outside a cathedral in the eastern city of Magdeburg, the scene of last week’s attack that killed five people and left more than 200 others wounded.
“Terror has arrived in our city,” said the AfD’s leader in Saxony-Anhalt state, Jan Wenzel Schmidt, condemning what he labelled the “monstrous political failure” that led up to the attack, for which a Saudi Arabian citizen was arrested.
“We want to close the borders,” he told many supporters of the anti-immigration party. “We can’t accommodate crazy people from all over the world. »
The party’s co-leader Alice Weidel described the attack as “an act of an Islamist full of hatred for what constitutes human cohesion … for us Germans, for us Christians”.
He demanded “a change so that, despite everything, we can live safely again,” as others in the crowd shouted: “Deport, expel, expel!
The suspect, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, faces numerous charges, including murder and attempted murder. He has lived in Germany since 2006 and has previously made anti-migrant and anti-Islam posts on social media, according to reports.
Although motivations have not yet been made public, Abdulmohsen has expressed strong anti-Islamic perspectives and anger with German officials regarding immigration policies. He has also unabashedly supported far-right conspiracy theories about the “Islamization” of Europe.
Despite the perspectives expressed through the suspect, which align with the AfD’s anti-immigration stance and Islamophobic rhetoric, Weidel called him an “Islamist” at the rally, to bolster the party’s anti-immigration perspectives.
Friday’s attack has prompted political debate over migration policies before the early elections in February, in which the AfD hopes to increase its standing in parliament.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser stated that “nothing will be left to chance” when it comes to revealing the available data on the 50-year-old suspect, who in the past had been treated for an intellectual illness, according to the German newspaper Die WeltArray.
At the same time, an anti-extremist initiative called “Let’s not give hate a chance” met in Magdeburg. “We are all shocked that other people need to exploit this ruthless act for their own political purposes,” the initiative said in a statement.