The Saudi suspect in a deadly attack on a Christmas market in eastern Germany in December will face six charges of murder and 338 charges of attempted murder, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Fifty-year-old psychiatrist Taleb Jawad al-Abdulmohsen is accused of driving a rented SUV at high speed into the crowded market in the city of Magdeburg.
Abdulmohsen was arrested near the scene shortly after the attack, which left six people dead and hundreds wounded.
According to a statement from prosecutors Abdulmohsen, who has been living in Germany since 2006, acted alone with the intention of killing “as many people as possible”.
They say he acted out of “unhappiness and frustration” over the outcome of several legal proceedings.
In January, the then interior minister Nancy Faeser said that Abdulmohsen’s erratic behaviour had come to the attention of law enforcement on at least 105 occasions before the attack.
She described him as “massively Islamophobic and close to right-wing extremist ideologies” and under the influence of “incoherent conspiracy theories”.
The attack in Magdeburg was one of a string of similar incidents in the run-up to February’s general election in which the prime suspects were foreign nationals.
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The attacks put immigration at the top of the political agenda and helped propel the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to its best-ever result of over 20 percent.
Conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who took office in May, has made a tougher immigration policy one of his top priorities.
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