The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has held what it calls a “memorial” rally for the victims of a vehicle attack at a Christmas market that has ignited debate over immigration and security policy.
The demonstration was held on Monday outside a cathedral in the eastern city of Magdeburg, the scene of last week’s attack that killed five other people and injured more than 200.
“Terror has come to our city,” said the leader of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, Jan Wenzel Schmidt, condemning what he called a “monstrous political failure” that triggered the attack, for which a Saudi 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. »
Party 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,” while others in the crowd shouted: “Expel it, expel it, expel it!”
The suspect, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, faces charges including murder and attempted murder. He has lived in Germany since 2006 and has in the past posted anti-immigrant and anti-Islam messages on social media, according to reports.
While motives have not yet been made public, Abdulmohsen has expressed strongly anti-Islam views, anger at German officials over immigration policies. He also has vocally supported far-right conspiracy theories about the “Islamisation” of Europe.
Despite the suspect’s expressed viewpoints, which align with the AfD’s anti-immigrant stance and Islamophobic rhetoric, Weidel referred to him as an “Islamist” at the rally – an attempt to bolster the party’s anti-immigrant views.
Friday’s attack has sparked a political debate over migration policies ahead of snap elections in February, in which the AfD hopes to strengthen its status 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” also 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.