The Magdeburg Regional Court sentenced Taleb Al Abdulmozen, who was found guilty of the attack on the city’s Christmas market in 2024 and the deaths of six people.

On December 20, 2024, the 51-year-old Saudi national, who had been granted asylum in Germany, drove a rented van into the open-air Christmas market in Magdeburg. A nine-year-old boy and five women lost their lives, and more than 300 people were injured, some seriously. The driver was arrested at the scene immediately after the attack.

According to the Attorney General’s Office, Al Abdulmozen had planned the attack well in advance; he did not pursue any serious ideological goals, but acted primarily out of personal motives. “The defendant was and is interested only in himself,” said the psychiatrist who examined him and diagnosed “narcissistic personality disorder” and a “huge need for attention.”

The perpetrator is originally from Saudi Arabia and was granted asylum in Germany in the 1990s. He was already a doctor and obtained his specialty certification in psychiatry in Germany. Until shortly before the attack, he was working as a psychiatrist at a secure psychiatric facility for mentally ill offenders in Bernburg, Saxony-Anhalt. In recent years, he had presented himself as an activist for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, while for years she had been involved in a dispute with a refugee aid organization.