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17-12-2025
BERLIN: Five men have been arrested in Germany suspected of being involved in a plot to drive a vehicle into people at a Christmas market.
Three Moroccans, an Egyptian and a Syrian were detained on Friday over the plan to target a market in the southern Bavarian state. Authorities said they suspected an “Islamist motive”.
Prosecutors said the Egyptian, a 56-year-old was alleged to have “called for a vehicle attack… with the aim of killing or injuring as many people as possible”. The Moroccans allegedly agreed to carry out the attack.
Officials in Germany have been on high alert after previous attacks at Christmas markets, including in Magdeburg last December that killed six people.
Authorities did not say when the planned attack was supposed to take place or which market was the target, though said they believed it to be one in the Dingolfing-Landau area, north east of Munich.
German newspaper Bild reported the Egyptian man was an imam at a mosque in the area.
Police said the Moroccan men, aged 30, 28 and 22 were arrested accused of having agreed to commit murder, while the Syrian man, a 37-year-old, was accused of encouraging the suspects “in their decision to commit the crime”.
The five suspects appeared before a magistrate on Saturday and remain in custody.
Joachim Herrmann, Bavaria’s state interior minister, told Bild the “excellent cooperation between our security services” had helped to prevent “a potentially Islamist-motivated attack”.
Christmas markets are popular festive attractions throughout Germany, frequently attracting large crowds and significant tourism.
Security at events has been increased in recent years, since an attack in Berlin in 2016 when a man drove a lorry into a market crowd, killing 12 people.
A man has gone on trial in Germany accused of carrying out an attack on a Christmas market in the eastern town of Magdeburg last December in which six people were killed and more than 300 others wounded.
The suspect is a doctor from Saudi Arabia who has been named as Taleb A., in line with German privacy laws. He is accused of driving a rented BMW car at speeds of up to 48km/h (29mph) through the market in the center of Magdeburg on 20 December 2024. If found guilty, he faces life imprisonment for murder.
Germany’s Christmas markets and festivals have come under attack before, mainly from extreme Islamists.
Last year’s attack happened at 19:02 (18:02 GMT) when the market was very crowded with Christmas revelers and lasted just a minute and four seconds.
Taleb A. appeared in the Magdeburg regional court charged with murdering six people, a nine-year-old boy and five women between the ages of 45 and 75.
He is also charged with attempted murder in relation to another 338 people.
He faces charges of causing grievous bodily harm to 309 people and causing dangerous interference to road traffic.
The prosecution told the court that Taleb A. had driven through the market at speed hitting people and running them over.
They said his aim seemed to have been “to kill an indeterminate number of people” and that he had planned and prepared the crime in detail over several weeks without the help of accomplices.
They say the suspect “was not under the influence of alcohol or similar substances during the rampage and apparently acted out of dissatisfaction and frustration over the course and outcome of a civil dispute and the failure of various criminal complaints”. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
