Taleb

Fifty-year-old Taleb al-Abdulmohsen was arrested at the scene, but the suspected attacker's motives remain unclear.

Officials say Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen, was an "untypical" attacker.

It is against this backdrop that Germany appears to have dropped the ball with Taleb al-Abdulmohsen.

Part of the explanation for this may lie in the fact that Taleb al-Abdulmohsen was granted asylum by Germany in 2016, one year after the former Chancellor Angela Merkel threw open her country's borders to let in more than a million migrants from the Middle East, and 10 years after al-Abdulmohsen had taken up residence in Germany.

The Saudi authorities, I am told, are currently working flat out to collate everything they have on the Magdeburg market suspect, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, and to share it with Germany's ongoing investigation "in every way possible".