AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
We are still learning more about Friday's attack in Magdeburg, Germany, where a driver sped through a Christmas market and killed at least five people. More than 200 others were injured. The suspect is a man from Saudi Arabia. Over the weekend, mourners left candles and flowers near the site, while far-right politicians have seized on the attack. Thomas Escritt is a correspondent for Reuters in Germany and is here to tell us more. Thank you for being with us.
THOMAS ESCRITT: Hi there.
RASCOE: Police arrested a suspect on Friday. We know he's a 50-year-old Saudi doctor with permanent resident status in Germany. What else have you learned about him?
ESCRITT: He worked in a correctional institute for treating criminals with addictions, and it sounds like - from his social media profile, it seems like he - far from being the classic case of the expected case of the Islamist who wanted to get revenge on Germany by attacking a Christmas market - far from that, he was, in fact, very strongly anti-Islam and, in fact, a supporter of the far-right Alternative for Germany party so not the conventional script at all.
RASCOE: Well, have police said anything about a possible motive?
ESCRITT: They're still looking into that, but what the justice minister said today - yesterday, rather - was that it's quite clear that he is an Islamophobe. That's different from a previous case some 10 years ago, when a - someone sped into a Christmas market in Berlin, and he was, in fact, a refugee who was motivated by anti-German sentiment.
RASCOE: OK, I understand there were protests last night in Magdeburg. What's been the reaction there in the surrounding region?
ESCRITT: Well, it's been a bit of a shock, I think, for - it's been a terrible shock, of course, for the people of the city. It's not a great - it's not a very big town of, say, 200,000 people, and 200 people were injured. Five were killed, including a 9-year-old boy, tragically. And, of course, in a town that size, everybody knows someone who knows someone, right? So the mood there was one of intense grief.
But for the far right, the - it was really a cause for damage control because this guy had been tweeting about how he admired Elon Musk. He had been - tweeted his support for the AFD, whose anti-Islam line they - he approved of. And so they have been mobilizing to own the narrative, to seize it back. So even in the morning, you still - when I was there - I arrived there in the morning. There were people laying candles in front of the church near the attack, weeping. It was natural grief from a stricken town.
But over the course of the day, the far right started massing. You saw all these people dressed in their black with tightly shorn hair. And they were trying to kind of stamp down on the narrative or get rid of this idea that he was actually a backer of their party.
RASCOE: There is an election coming up in February. Could this attack have broader political implications?
ESCRITT: That's clearly the fear of the AFD. They didn't want a - they clearly - for them, it doesn't look good that someone who professes they're a supporter attacked a crowd. They are trying to stress the fact that he is an immigrant and, therefore, someone that they oppose. And they say he shouldn't have been in the country in the first place, and if he hadn't been, then, of course, Germany would have been safer.
But for now, it's unclear. People are criticizing the government for saying that they supposedly received warnings from Saudi Arabia about this guy and didn't act on it. It's very unclear how it's going to shake out, but it's going to be very volatile, I think, for the next few weeks.
RASCOE: That's Thomas Escritt with Reuters. Thank you so much for joining us.
ESCRITT: Many thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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