Global News Podcast - Five dead and 200 injured in Magdeburg Christmas market attack

Episode Date: December 22, 2024

The German city of Magdeburg is in mourning after a Christmas attack killed five. We hear the possible motives of the suspect. Also: Albania shuts down TikTok, and in Guatamala children are rescued from a sect.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. the show on your podcast app and then just click follow or subscribe and if you switch on notifications you'll get a reminder too. It's that easy. Follow or subscribe and never miss an episode. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Bernadette Keough and in the early hours of Sunday the 22nd 22 December these are our main stories. The German city of Magdeburg is in mourning after a car was driven into a crowd at a Christmas market killing five. We hear about the possible motives the suspected attacker may have had. Albania is to shut down TikTok for at least a year. Also in this podcast, the US avoids a government shutdown after days of political turmoil

and the musicians of Syria pondering what the new Islamic leadership will mean for creative freedom. We are willing to talk to them with logic. We are willing to talk to them with a real proposal. It doesn't seem like in the first week of freeing Syria they are willing to look for the cultural side. We start in Germany and Friday evening's attack at a Christmas market in Magdeburg. The number of people killed has risen to five. A nine-year-old child was among them. Two hundred people were injured, around forty of them seriously. The suspect, who was arrested at the scene, has been identified as a fifty-year-old doctor, Talib al-Abdul-Mozan from Saudi Arabia. Residents of the city have been laying flowers

for the victims of the attack, and there's still a sense of profound shock. Unbelievably sad. It's unbelievable. I feel shocked. There are no words, no suitable words. I live right behind them all, the Alley Center. It's simply unbelievable. On Saturday evening, a memorial service took place at Magdeburg Cathedral. Hundreds of people were in attendance, including families of the victims and emergency service

workers. Earlier on Saturday during his visit to Magdeburg, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described the attack as a tragedy and called for unity. Our correspondent Bethany Bell has spent the day in the city. Magdeburg is in mourning. Outside a church close to the Christmas market, people have been laying flowers and lighting candles. Many were in tears, struggling to understand how an evening of holiday celebrations could turn into such a nightmare. This morning, Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz placed a white rose at the site. He said the attack was a dreadful tragedy. It's important to me that when such a terrible, horrific event takes place, that we stay together

as a country, that we stick together and that we unite. That it's not hatred that determines our togetherness, but the fact that we are a community that wants to win a common future. And that we won't let those who want to sow hatred get away with it. Other national and regional politicians joined Mr Schultz in paying tribute to the victims. But as they left, there were angry shouts from the crowd. Go away, they yelled. We are the people. More details have emerged about the suspect, who's been named by police as Taleb al-Abdul-Mosm.

Originally from Saudi Arabia, he arrived in Germany in 2006 and was recognised as a refugee in 2016. He worked as a psychiatrist at a specialist clinic in the nearby town of Bernburg. The clinic said he'd worked there since 2020 but had not been on duty since October because of sickness and holiday. Officials are still working to clarify the motive. Germany's interior minister, Nancy Faeser, said the suspect was believed to hold Islamophobic views. At a news conference, the chief prosecutor in Magdeburg, Horst Walter-Norpenz, outlined one theory they were investigating.

As things stand at present, it appears that the backdrop to this incident is perhaps being unsatisfied about the way in which Saudi Arabian refugees are treated in Germany potentially. But we didn't have a focus on the perpetrator. We didn't have him in our sights or on our radar, so to speak. There was once a proceeding that involved the perpetrator. But we didn't have him in our sights, thinking that he might commit this kind of crime, not at all. So do not get the wrong end of the stick. At the news conference, police also said the suspect had driven the car using a route meant

for the emergency services, which didn't have barricades. But they denied a lapse in security. The market itself has been closed and is cordoned off. In the words of one local official, Christmas in Magdeburg is over. Bethany Bell. Other strands of investigation into the suspect are also coming to light as our security correspondent Frank Gardner explains. The source, who asked not to be named, said these notifications contained details about him. Three were sent to Germany's intelligence agencies and one to the foreign ministry, but all the source said were ignored.

Reports have emerged in the German media of the suspect's campaigns against his country's official religion, Islam, and of his fury at the policy of his adopted home, Germany, in letting in such huge numbers of Muslim refugees from the Middle East. He's also reported to have tried to help young Saudi women and critics of the government there escape from Saudi Arabia and seek asylum in Germany. In the past there have been cases reported of agents of the Saudi government carrying out surveillance on dissident Saudis living in Germany and Canada and attempts to bring them back to Saudi Arabia by force.

Dr. Hans Jacob Schindler is senior director at the counter-extremism project in Berlin. He gave his take on why the suspect may have carried out the attack. He spoke to the BBC's Owen Bennett-Jones. It is very hard. The best guesstimate that you can make looking at what he has been communicating over the last couple of years is that he really belongs into this conspiratorial narrative category of extremists, which had been growing quite significantly since the corona epidemic and social media companies are really not doing anything against those people. They are not quite effective in preventing Islamist terrorism content, which they know best.

But conspiratorial narratives such as this, especially individualized conspiratorial narratives because he also felt personally persecuted by the German police, is something that these companies simply don't look at. And the German security forces neither have the legal mandate nor the resources to monitor the entire internet all the time. Yeah, but I mean even if you had monitored the internet and seen his conspiracy theories, you wouldn't think they would lead to a violent act like this, would you? Well not necessarily, but he did say he is going to do an attack.

He did say he's going to do an attack. He did say he's going to take revenge. So there were clear formulations. But the problem is, and this is going to be always a difficult thing of assessment for the security forces to go over, unfortunately, because the big social media companies, in this case X, where all of this material is, have not gotten better, but they reduced their content monitoring capabilities and investments, you have so much hatred and so many fantasies of violence on the internet that it's really hard to distinguish what is just a person that is disturbed and just lives disturbed ideas out on the internet and which one of those is a person that then

gets into a car and plows through a Christmas market? I take your point that there were some worrying signs online. Basically he was anti-system. Is that the sort of broad category you could put him in? That is the most fitting category when you say the police prosecutes me individually because I'm a critic of Islam and Germany as a society and the police are attempting to Islamise Europe.

That is the kind of conspiracy narrative that denies the legitimacy of the system. That's the best fit, but he remains a very weird character. Hans Jacob Schindler of the Counter Extremism Project in Berlin. The social network TikTok is to be shut down in Albania from the beginning of next year. The decision, announced by the country's Prime Minister, Edi Rama, follows concerns raised over the influence of social media on children. The ban is part of a broader plan to make schools safer. With more details, here's our Europe Regional Editor, Dani Eberhardt.

For Prime Minister Edi Rama, restrictions aren't enough. There will be no TikTok in the Republic of Albania, he declared, following a national consultation with teachers and parents to improve child safety. TikTok, he said, was the neighbourhood thug. He's linked the use of the video sharing site and other social media to violence in schools. It follows the stabbing of a 14-year-old boy last month, one of a number of school killings or stabbings this year. The boy was caught up in a dispute allegedly played out on social media. TikTok has told the BBC it had found no evidence that the person who allegedly stabbed the 14-year-old

or the victim himself had TikTok accounts. It also said it's seeking urgent clarifications from the Albanian government about the proposed ban. Albania's education minister has promised greater efforts to teach children about the risks of platforms such as TikTok and Snapchat. But her approach to improving child safety is not just about clamping down on social media. She's promised to employ hundreds more psychosocial support workers in schools, increase extracurricular sports and to pilot summer schools in Tirana. The effects of social media on kids' development is causing concern globally,

as regards screen addictions, bullying and related anxieties. globally, as regards screen addictions, bullying and related anxieties. Australia recently passed the world's strictest measures, voting to ban kids under 16 from using social media. That particular ban will take at least a year to implement. Danny Abarhard In talks on Friday in Syria's capital, visiting US diplomats called on the country's new Islamist leaders to respect the rights of all citizens. Syria's musicians will be watching closely. The 14-year civil war gave energy and focus to a nascent heavy metal scene. Electronic music and dance shows also flourished, leading to a resurgence of Syrian nightlife. Barbara Plettusher talked to musicians in Damascus about how they see this new era for

Syria after the fall of the Assad government. Syrian Metal is War. That's the title of this documentary on an underground music scene that found energy and focus as the country was consumed with conflict. Nal Alhadidi sold heavy metal cassettes in his music store some 20 years ago as local bands began to form. They operated in the shadows because the rebellious rock was forbidden. Even if you grow hairs going in black shirts. The security will take you. Yeah, they suspect that you are

satanic or something. Satanic? Yes. That's what happened before the war. After the war, they were too busy to dig in this way. So in a way, the war was good for heavy metal, that it gave you more space?

Yes, I can say that, but it is not good because most of people start to leave the country. 90% of my friends now in Europe, in Netherlands and Germany. Wajed Khair is a musician who stayed, but he quit music when the killing started. It seemed that any lyrics I would write, they don't express what really happened. No words can express what really happened back then. Just last year Wajed finally started playing and recording again, a different style of music this time. Now he's wondering what the new Islamist leadership, known as HTS, means for creative freedom. Is there any sense that you feel you need to keep a low profile until you figure out exactly where things are going musically?

Actually no. We have to be heard. We have to let all the people know that we are here, we exist. It's not just Islamic France and Islamic States here. Actually, I don't think that keeping low profile under these circumstances is good for anyone. It's electronic music that led the resurgence of Syria's nightlife over the past few years, with big dance parties in historic locations. DJ Maher Green is one of the musicians involved. He says people in the industry are preparing to approach the Islamist government. We are willing to talk to them with logic. We are willing to talk to them with a real

proposal. It doesn't seem like in the first week of freeing Syria they are willing to look for the cultural side. They have a lot of problems, other problems to look for. We are trying to organize ourselves before they are looking for the culture, so we get there first. Like others here, Maher has been experimenting, mixing traditional Arabic music with electronic beats. He's wary about the conservative views of the rebels. The culture is religious songs, religious melodies, and that's it.

We have so much experience, we have so much involved, we have so much mixed culture. Syria's music scene has revived and even thrived during the civil war. Now it faces a new and unexpected test. That report by Barbara Pletasha. Still to come. People were suffering from human trafficking, marriage between underage kids, also pregnancy without the consent of the children. Authorities in Guatemala say they have rescued 160 children from a religious sect.

The 442nd Infantry Battalion, the most decorated unit in US military history for its size and length of service. We gotta make every bullet count. No surrender. Brave men who fought the Germans in the fields of France and Italy during the Second World War. Are we not fighting for us? Just for the people back home. Purple Heart Warriors, an original drama series from the BBC World Service, tells their story.

Germans surrounding all sides. Listen now by searching for dramas wherever you get your BBC podcasts. To Lebanon now, and it's almost a month since the ceasefire was agreed between Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah had been trading attacks across the southern Lebanese border with Israel in response to Israel's bombardment of Gaza following the October 7 attacks by Hamas. Now as part of the truce deal, the Lebanese army is tasked with ensuring there are no armed militias, principally Hezbollah, in the south of the country bordering with Israel. A duty it has never undertaken before. Our Middle East regional editor Sebastian Usher, who is in Beirut, told me more.

When Israel launched the major part of its offensive, including the ground offensive against Hezbollah back in October, it targeted mainly the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Beqa Valley in the east, parts of which are under Hezbollah control, and the south. So in all of those areas, the Lebanese army has been clearing roads, opening roads, clearing rubbish and debris. There are parts of south Lebanon which are almost flattened by the Israeli airstrikes that took place. And also the unexploded munitions from Israel in particular. Today it staged about a seven-hour operation devoted to that in several areas.

So all of these are building some confidence in Lebanon and outside that this ceasefire deal, despite many violations that have taken place, may hold. But the real challenge that lies ahead for the Lebanese army is when it makes a full deployment, particularly down in the south. Sebastian, you arrived in Beirut a short while ago. What's the mood of the people there? What have people been saying to you? I mean this was only just over three weeks ago that the ceasefire happened. It was greeted, I think, far more jubilantly here in Lebanon than it was in Israel. There was great joy

in the first days and people rushed down to the southern villages and towns that they'd had to leave. But I think what I find with lots of people here is a sense almost of unreality, that they can't believe that this can hold, that things can move in a positive direction, a sense that something is simmering, something unnamed is under the surface that may suddenly explode in everyone's faces. People here are wondering what Hezbollah might do next within the context of a country where politically things might move.

People, I think they're enjoying the sense at the moment that, you know, the fighting has stopped, the risk to life, etc. has stopped. People have been coming back. I mean, all the flights, it was almost impossible to find a flight to come to Lebanon and it's given them a great sense of humour about the way things go and also a sense of not ever taking anything for what it looks like on the surface. Sebastian Usher. The authorities in Guatemala say they've rescued 160 children from a farm used by an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect, which is under investigation for alleged child sex abuse.

The group, Lev Tahor, moved to Guatemala a decade ago from Canada. The Lev Tahor sect accused the Guatemalan authorities of religious persecution. Jodi Garcia is a freelance journalist from Guatemala. She told Owen Bennett-Jones more about the group. The authorities raided the place because they have information that these people were suffering from human trafficking. Some of the children and women escaped and ran to the police to present legal complaints about treatments that they were receiving inside the community. For example, marriage between underage kids, also pregnancy without the consent of the children. Now, what the authorities did yesterday was to rescue 160

children and teenagers that might have been victims of human trafficking and other crimes and they detained one police accused that he might be leaking information to Lef Dahor to let them know that they were trying to investigate them. Were these children Jewish children from the community? Were they brought in from other countries? The information available right now is that some of the nationalities are Canada and the United States and they were brought in here to Guatemala. In some cases with the consent of the parents that were part already of

the community. And this is a religious outfit is it? It's mainly religious. They say to the authorities that they study the Bible, they want to live by their own rules like children don't go to school, they want to live by their own rules, like children don't go to school, they are educated inside of this farm, the woman and children are totally covered with clothes. It sounds like a cult. Do you know how many people were there? Yes, sounds like a cult.

And according to the authorities, it's about 500 people that live in this area and 160 were underage. There's someone, a special prosecutor, saying that officers found bodies that had been buried there. Yes, yes. Yesterday the prosecutor informed that they have a dog there and they found cage with a body. The suspicious is that it's an underage or a baby. We spoke with some of the authorities and they were explaining that they receive information

that some of the teenagers died giving birth and sometimes the bodies were buried inside the farm. Yesterday the US community in Guatemala released a statement saying that they take distance from Leopoldojo. They don't have anything to do with them and they say that they will distance from Leopoldo, they don't have anything to do with them and they say that they will help if they can afford something. So it sounds like this group will be broken up. Right now the investigation is ongoing, actually the raid ended last night almost at 11pm. So the prosecutors mentioned that all these crimes might be committed by one person of

the community, one leader, but at the moment they haven't been detained. Freelance journalist Jodi Garcia in Guatemala. It's become a familiar ritual in Washington in recent years. Politicians in the US Congress trying to come up with a last-minute deal to agree a budget in order to avoid a partial government shutdown. After two failed attempts and with a Friday night deadline fast approaching, Republicans and Democrats finally voted to pass a spending plan.

Shortly after it was passed, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said he'd been keeping in close contact with Donald Trump and Elon Musk. I was in constant contact with President Trump throughout this process, spoke with him most recently about 45 minutes ago. Trump and Elon Musk. After the agreement in the House of Representatives, the budget was also passed by the Senate. Here's the Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer. There will be no government shutdown right before Christmas. This is a good bill. It'll keep the government open and funds and helps Americans affected by hurricanes

and natural disasters, helps our farmers and avoid harmful cuts. While the immediate crisis has probably been averted, all the scrapping and the scraping together of a compromise has also raised pressing questions about who wields real political power in Washington. My colleague Paul Moss got more details about the passing of the bill from our North America correspondent Peter Bowes. It's a pared down spending bill to keep the government functioning for the next three months, that's all. Just enough that both sides, Democrats and Republicans, could agree to avoid a shutdown.

It includes, amongst other things, funding for disaster relief and there's some aid for farmers but it doesn't include a debt ceiling measure that Donald Trump wanted. That's a limit on government borrowing that the president-elect has been campaigning for. He would like to see the ceiling suspended for at least the next two years. The Democrats are hailing that omission as a victory. Their leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, said that they had successfully stopped, to use his words, the billionaire boys club that wanted a $4 trillion blank check by suspending the debt ceiling. Now, Peter, this time yesterday you and I were talking about all this and talking about the role of Elon Musk. Now we hear that when the House Speaker spoke to Donald Trump to

try to sort out all of this mess, he had Elon Musk on the line. Now it does seem once again that Mr. Musk is having quite an influence on major issues in America. Well you know this Trump-Musk double act is emerging as certainly a new, a rather unusual force in Washington. We know that Speaker Johnson was in constant touch with the President-elect Donald Trump, but that Elon Musk has, as you say, also weighed in sometimes very vocally, very publicly to the bemusement, annoyance of many in Washington, especially the Democrats. Remember, when the bill was first released on Tuesday, he said any member of the House or Senate who voted for what he called this outrageous spending bill deserved to be voted out in two years. He called it

one of the worst bills ever written. Now it's important to remember that no one has voted for Elon Musk. He is a Trump appointee to an unpaid post, a spending czar with the new administration, but I think many in the Republican Party especially will be watching very closely to see how or whether he continues to wield power if that's what it is in the way that we've seen it in the last few days. Well so much for Elon Musk's power what about Donald Trump's because he did not get his own way here did he? Well it tells us that despite his overwhelming election win securing both houses of Congress, having a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, it won't be all plain sailing for Donald Trump.

The last few days have revealed significant differences amongst Republicans, especially on this issue of debt ceiling, fiscal policy. They don't like borrowing and the clear message to Mr Trump is that he won't get it all his own way. Peter Bose. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, there have been people in the US making donations to help Ukrainians. At the beginning the support was overwhelming, but there are now signs that well away from the front lines, war weariness could be setting in. The BBC's Christina Folk reports.

In the city of Chernivtsi in West Ukraine, children open presents as their mothers watch in the background. Two young boys play with new footballs, while a girl in a knitted chumper smiles and holds up a doll with a big red bow in her hair. They have all lost a parent in the war. The presents were organised by a group of US volunteers, who have been collecting donations since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Some of those donations are organised by the owner of Viselka, a restaurant in New York. Jason Burchard's grandparents fled Ukraine after the Second World War and became refugees

in the U.S. When Russia's invasion began, Viselka quickly became the hub for New York's Ukrainian diaspora to organize help. But as the war has dragged on, Jason says donations are starting to dry up. It's been a bit challenging to be honest. They trickle in but not as you know on the grandest scale as they once were. You know as we enter year three people are very war weary and are not sure of what the future holds. In Ukraine, Shana Galeeva is distributing presents and other vital items like medical supplies with her charity Bird of Light.

Since the beginning of the war, she says, the charity has raised $5.8 million, mainly focusing on supporting children who have lost parents in the war. These children are writing letters to Saint Nicholas, which is a Ukrainian Santa Claus. Every single child writes, my dream is for the war to be over so that we can all live and play with our friends. And then they become practical and they ask for things from soccer uniforms to toys or makeup kits. Kira is one of the children that received a present this year. Her father went missing in the Eastern Donbas region, which Russian forces are desperately trying to seize.

desperately trying to cease. When this gift came, I was very happy. I wanted it for a long time. But still, when I think about the way it came to me, the price I had to pay for it, I am ready to give everything back just to have my father returned. My dad was the one who would always give me advice. And now, without him, I don't know what to do. It's not just the nations for Ukraine that are drying up. U.S. government support might also now be in doubt.

Giuseppe Irto is from the German Kiel Institute for the World Economy. They track U.S. government assistance to Ukraine. The U.S. in particular is the most significant donor of aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict. Incoming President Donald Trump has previously criticized the amount the US is spending on military support for Ukraine. It's not clear if or by how much another support package will be approved. Ukrainians like Zhanna now live with the uncertainty of new US leadership. I believe in humanity, although it's getting harder and harder. But I want to believe that this year 2025 is going to be the year when kindness and goodness will prevail.

Shana Galayeva from the charity Bird of Light, ending that report by Christina Falk. And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Paul Mason and the producer was Marion Straughan. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Bernadette Keough. Until next time, goodbye. You are bound to devote yourself to the long conflict between the light and the dark. The Dark is Rising. An immersive audio adventure, adapting Susan Cooper's classic fantasy novel into a gripping

12-part family drama. Everything had changed. The dark is rising. Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts.