Berliner Tageblatt - German prosecutors demand life term for Christmas market attack

Prosecutors demanded the harshest possible sentence for the confessed attacker, Saudi-born Taleb Jawad al-Abdulmohsen, telling the court that the car ramming which also wounded more than 300 "defies human comprehension".

The attack "was planned long in advance" and created ongoing suffering among victims and their families that is "simply indescribable," prosecutor Matthias Boettcher told the court.

During the months-long trial Abdulmohsen, a psychiatrist and anti-Islam activist, admitted to planning an attack but denied deliberately running people over.

His testimony in court was sometimes incoherent and riddled with bizarre conspiracy theories and references to fringe far-right ideas.

"I am the one who drove the car," Abdulmohsen told the court at the opening of the trial in November, acknowledging crashing his speeding SUV into the crowded holiday market on December 20, 2024.

But the rest of Abdulmohsen's opening statement in court largely consisted of incoherent and unrelated diatribes about politicians, violence against women in Saudi Arabia, religious topics and claims of a cover-up staged by the Magdeburg police.

According to Boettcher, Abdulmohsen's motive lay in a conflict with a Cologne-based refugee organisation against which he had lost a civil suit.

He was charged with six counts of murder and 338 counts of attempted murder in the ramming attack.

The rampage stunned Germany and provoked a heated nationwide debate about security around Christmas markets, a beloved seasonal German tradition.

In 2016, an Islamic extremist deliberately crashed a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 and wounding dozens of others.

M.Ouellet--BTB