Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has held what it calls a “memorial” rally for the victims of a car-ramming attack on a Christmas market that has inflamed debate on migrant and security policy.
The demonstration was held Monday outside a cathedral in the eastern city of Magdeburg, the scene of last week’s attack that killed five more people and wounded more than 200.
“Terror has come to our city,” said AfD leader 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 must close the borders,” he told hundreds of supporters of the anti-immigration party. “We can no longer take in madmen 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. ”
She demanded “change so we can finally live in security again”, as people in the crowd chanted: “Deport, deport, deport!”
The suspect, Taleb al Abdulmohsen, faces charges including murder and attempted murder. He has lived in Germany since 2006 and has posted anti-immigrant and anti-Islam messages on social media in the past, 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 perspectives expressed by the suspect, which align with the AfD’s anti-immigration stance and Islamophobic rhetoric, Weidel called him an “Islamist” at the rally, an attempt at the party’s anti-immigrant perspectives.
Friday’s attack has prompted political debate over migration policies before the early elections in February, in which the AfD hopes to increase its standing in parliament.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said 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 “Don’t give hate a chance” also met in Magdeburg. “We are all surprised and that other folks need to exploit this merciless act for their own political ends,” the initiative said in a statement.