This is partly due to the fact that Taleb al-Abdulmohsen Germany granted asylum in 2016, a year after Former Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the borders of her country to let through more than a million migrants from the Middle East and 10 years after al-Abdulmohsen settled in Germany.
Coming from a country where Islam is the only religion allowed to be practiced in public, al-Abdulmohsen was a very unusual citizen.
He turned away from Islam, making himself a heretic in the eyes of many.
He was born in the Saudi city of Hofuf in an oasis of date palms in 1974. Little is known about his early life before he decided to leave Saudi Arabia and move to Europe at the age of 32.
Active on social media, on his Twitter account (later X) he identifies himself as a psychiatrist and founder of the Saudi rights movement, along with the tag @SaudiExMuslims.
He founded a website that helps Saudi women flee the country to Europe.
The Saudis say he was a trafficker, and Interior Ministry investigators, Mabaatheth, are said to have a big case on him.
In recent years, there have been reports of dissident Saudis coming under hostile surveillance by Saudi government agents in Canada, the United States and Germany.
There is no doubt that German authorities, both federal and state, made serious mistakes in the al-Abdulmohsen case.
Whatever the reasons for not responding, as the Saudis claim, to repeated warnings about his extremism, he appeared to pose a danger to the country that welcomed him.
In particular, he failed to block or at least guard the emergency access road to the Magdeburg Alter Markt, which allowed him to allegedly drive his BMW into the crowd.
German authorities have defended the layout of the market and said the investigation into the suspect’s past is ongoing.
But a complicating factor is that Saudi Arabia, while considered a friend and ally of the West, has a poor human rights record.
Until June 2018 Saudi women banned from driving and even those women who have publicly called for the repeal of this ban have still been persecuted and imprisoned.
The crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, who is only 30 years old, is extremely popular in his country.
