The suspect in the car-ramming incident at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg had appeared in seven investigative proceedings in the two years prior to the attack, Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported on Saturday.

The suspect, identified by local media as 50-year-old Taleb A., was arrested after plowing a black BMW into a Christmas market.

Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia, had expressed anti-Islamic views and described himself as a Saudi dissident, an official said.

The authorities said they were struggling to understand the motives behind ramming a car into a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg, which left a 9-year-old boy among the five dead.

Authorities in Germany on Monday released details of past threats made by the suspected perpetrator of the deadly car rampage through a Christmas market in Magdeburg. According to the Ministry of Justice in the north-eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,

MAGDEBURG, Germany, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Authorities investigated a Saudi doctor with a history of anti-Islam rhetoric as the suspected driver in a car-ramming attack on a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg that killed five people and injured scores.

Authorities have not formally named the suspect in the car ramming in the city of Magdeburg that killed at least five people and wounded hundreds, saying only that he is a Saudi doctor who has lived in Germany for nearly two decades and that he acted alone.