Five people have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of plotting an attack on an outdoor Christmas market. Authorities are investigating whether their plan was motivated by Islamist ideology.
According to AFP and the German daily Bild on the 14th (local time), police and prosecutors in Germany said on the 12th that they had arrested and detained one Egyptian national, three Moroccan nationals, and one Syrian national in the southern state of Bavaria. They are suspected of planning to use a vehicle to attack a Christmas market.
Authorities are investigating whether they plotted the attack with Islamist motives. However, authorities did not say whether the attack was actually scheduled or how specific the plan was.
According to Bild, the Egyptian among the suspects is reported to be an Islamic cleric (imam) at a mosque in Bavaria. The suspect is accused of urging people at a local Christmas market to "use a vehicle to kill or injure as many people as possible."
The Moroccan suspects are accused of agreeing to carry out the attack, while the Syrian suspect is accused of inciting it.
Earlier, on Dec. 20 last year (local time), a vehicle plowed into the Christmas market in Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt, a former East German region, killing six people and injuring more than 300. At the time, authorities believed the suspect committed the crime out of dissatisfaction with the German government's inclusive refugee policy.
Taleb Jawad Al Abdolmohsen, who drove the vehicle into the crowd, was indicted last month and admitted the charges. He is a psychiatrist from Saudi Arabia who had lived in Germany for about 20 years, and was said to have been dissatisfied with Germany's immigration policy, openly displaying anti-Islam views on social media and supporting the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).