A 9-year-old boy described by his mother as her “little teddy bear” was named as the first victim of the German Christmas market terror attack as protests erupted over security failings and immigration.
André Gleißner died alongside four women after a Saudi doctor allegedly drove a dark BMW through a Christmas market in the east German town of Magdeburg.
“Let my little teddy bear fly around the world again. André didn’t do anything to anybody. He was only with us on earth for nine years. Why you? Just why?” André‘s mother, Désirée, said.
It came after thousands of hard-right protesters called for the mass deportation of migrants as they took to the streets of Magdeburg on Saturday evening.
The suspect Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen came to Germany in 2006 but had since expressed strong anti-immigration views and had publicly backed the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
“He acted like an Islamist terrorist although ideologically he was clearly an enemy of Islam,” Nancy Faeser, Germany’s Interior Minister, said as the Government faced questions over security failings.
Ministers and intelligence chiefs are facing pressure over the failure to arrest Abdulmohsen despite numerous warnings.
Faeser said the attacker did “not fit any previous pattern” and ordered domestic and foreign intelligence agencies to explain security lapses at a parliamentary hearing.
Demonstrators in Magdeburg chanted “deportation” and “migration kills”, with many wearing all-black and face masks as they carried a banner calling for “remigration”.
There were minor scuffles between protesters and police, according to local media reports.
Also, a man was charged with inciting hatred after shouting “Germany for the Germans” during a minute’s silence for the victims of the attack at a football match in nearby Essen.
The 9-year-old boy named was an aspiring firefighter who attended kids’ sessions at the local station in the district of Elm-Asse, which is fundraising for his family in the wake of the boy’s killing.
In a statement, the Lower Saxony youth fire brigade said: “It is with deep shock and sadness that we share in the tragic events of the terrorist attack in Magdeburg. At a time that should be marked by community, hope and reflection, we are once again confronted with fear and violence.
“We are particularly saddened by the loss of such a young life from our own ranks. André, 9 years old and a committed member of the Warle children’s fire brigade in the Braunschweig district, was taken from his life by this senseless act.”
Local migrant organisations warned the attack would be exploited for political purposes.
“Magdeburg must not become a playground for right-wing agitation,” a spokesman for the local network of migrant organisations in Saxony-Anhalt said.
Faeser announced the country’s federal police had launched an investigation into whether the attack could have been prevented.
“The investigating authorities will clarify all the background information. We will carefully examine what clues there were in the past and how they were followed up on,” she told Bild.
It followed calls by the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) opposition for a special parliamentary session before New Year’s Eve to investigate alleged failings of the German security services.
Police in Magdeburg are thought to have carried out a risk assessment of the suspect, Abdulmohsen, but concluded he “posed no concrete danger”.
Germany was reportedly warned four times about the suspect’s extreme views by Saudi Arabia, his country of origin, but did not act.
He had been known for exhibiting erratic behaviour, including regularly calling emergency numbers and setting off a fire alarm in a police station, for which he was due to appear in court last Thursday.
A minister in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where al-Abdulmohsen lived for around five years, said the suspect had threatened in 2013 to commit an act that would attract international attention just days after the Boston marathon bombing.
Bamf, Germany’s federal office for migration, admitted they received a tip-off about the suspect in the summer of 2023, but did not investigate this or further warnings about him.
Police in Berlin said they were assessing screenshots which showed a civilian urging Bamf to investigate claims the suspect had threatened to take “revenge” against Germans.
Holger Münch, president of the federal criminal police office (BKA), described Abdulmohsen as an “untypical perpetrator who does not fit into a normal pattern”.
Immediately after the attack, rumours spread on social media that the perpetrator was an Islamist terrorist, posted without evidence.
Faeser later said the suspect was Islamophobic.
Abdulmohsen has been charged with five counts of murder and multiple attempted murder charges.
The attack was seized on by Tesla and X owner Elon Musk, who called on Olaf Scholz to immediately resign from his position as German Chancellor after the attack, labelling him an “incompetent fool”.
Scholz’s Government lost a vote of no-confidence last week, triggering elections set to take place in February.
Musk had recently expressed support for the AfD.
Scholz was booed and heckled as he visited the Magdeburg Christmas market after the attack, with enraged onlookers shouting “p*** off”.
He had already been under pressure to respond to concerns over immigration after a Syrian asylum seeker was charged with killing three people in an attack in the town of Solingen in August.
Scholz said at the time that illegal migration “must go down”.