Germany Christmas market attack suspect charged with murder, attempted murder
Police report scuffles at far-right protest attended by thousands on Saturday night calling for migrants to be deported

A man suspected of driving a car into the Magdeburg Christmas market in Germany in an attack that killed at least five people and injured scores of others faces charges of murder and attempted murder, police said on Sunday, after the man was remanded in custody.
The suspect is a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia who has lived in Germany for almost two decades.
A magistrate ordered the man, identified in German media as Taleb A., into pretrial custody after prosecutors pressed charges of murder on five counts, multiple counts of attempted murder and grievous bodily harm, according to a police statement.
It identified the dead as a nine-year-old boy and four adult women, aged 52, 45, 75 and 67.
Authorities said 200 people were injured, including 41 in serious condition. They were being treated in multiple hospitals in Magdeburg, which is about 130 kilometers (80 miles) west of Berlin, and beyond.
German authorities have not named the suspect, who has permanent resident status in Germany, and media reports do not give his full name in keeping with local privacy laws.

Police reported scuffles at a protest attended by around 2,100 people on Saturday night, one day after the attack. Right-wingers had billed the gathering on messaging app Telegram as a “demonstration against terror.”
Protesters wearing black balaclavas could be seen holding a large banner with the word “remigration,” a term popular with far-right supporters seeking the mass deportation of migrants and people deemed not ethnically German.
The motive for Friday night’s attack remains unclear. Investigators are probing the suspect’s criticism of German authorities’ treatment of Saudi refugees, among other things. He was also a staunch critic of Islam and had voiced support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on social media platform X.
He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he referred to as the “Islamification of Europe.”
The horror triggered by yet another act of mass violence in Germany makes it likely that migration will remain a key issue as the country heads toward an early election on February 23.
AfD had already been polling strongly amid a societal backlash against the large numbers of refugees and migrants who have arrived in Germany over the past decade.

Right-wing figures from across Europe have criticized German authorities for having allowed high levels of migration in the past and for what they see as security failures now.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is known for a strong anti-migration position going back years, used the attack in Germany to lash out at the European Union’s migration policies.
At an annual press conference in Budapest on Saturday, Orban insisted that “there is no doubt that there is a link between the changed world in Western Europe, the migration that flows there, especially illegal migration and terrorist acts.”
Orban vowed to “fight back” against the EU migration policies “because Brussels wants Magdeburg to happen to Hungary, too.”