A suspect has been placed in pretrial detention and is expected to face deportation. On December 20, 2024, a Saudi national drove a car into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing six people.
German police arrested a 21-year-old man in Magdeburg, in central Germany, who is described as being “from Central Asia” and is suspected of having “plans to carry out an attack” potentially “motivated by Islamist ideology,” regional authorities told AFP on Monday, confirming reports in the German press.
The Interior Ministry of Saxony-Anhalt, the state of which Magdeburg is the capital, is preparing “a deportation order” for the suspect, who was placed in pretrial detention on Friday, the same source told AFP. Such a measure is possible “against a foreign national based on a fact-based risk assessment, in order to prevent a specific danger” to public security “or a terrorist threat” in Germany.
The arrest took place on the same day as the detention of five other men, one Egyptian, three Moroccans, and one Syrian, suspected of preparing an Islamist-inspired vehicle ramming attack targeting a Christmas market in Bavaria, in southern Germany. According to the tabloid Bild, the 56-year-old Egyptian suspect is an imam at a mosque near the town of Dingolfing-Landau, close to Munich.
The arrest of the 21-year-old man in Magdeburg also comes almost exactly one year after the deadly attack on the Christmas market in the same city.
