German police have shot dead the man suspected of driving a van into a crowd at Berlin’s Pride celebrations, less than 24 hours after an attack that killed one woman and injured 29 others.
Abdul Ballout, 21, was traced to an allotment garden complex in the city’s Spandau district on the evening of July 26. Berlin police said he ran at officers carrying a bladed weapon before they opened fire, and that attempts to resuscitate him failed.
German interior minister Alexander Dobrindt classified the killing as an Islamist terror attack. He said the suspect had used the vehicle as a weapon before turning on passers-by with what was believed to be a machete.
A white van entered the Tiergarten park shortly before 10pm on July 25 and struck pedestrians on a footpath before colliding with a tree. The site lies a few hundred metres from the closing party of Christopher Street Day, as Berlin Pride is known in Germany, though outside the official route.
Ballout was a German citizen of Lebanese background, born in Berlin in 2005. Police spokesman Florian Nath said he was known to officers and counted as part of the capital’s “Islamist scene”.
The Berlin general prosecutor’s office said Ballout had developed a wish to join Islamic State during the second half of 2025 and had tried to reach Syria through Lebanon. He was detained there and sentenced by a military court to three months for inciting religious and sectarian conflict.
He returned to Germany in November 2025 and was arrested on arrival at Berlin Brandenburg Airport. On May 12, 2026 a juvenile court in the Tiergarten district sentenced him to one year and 10 months for preparing a serious act of violence endangering the State and for distributing Islamic State propaganda.
The court lifted his arrest warrant and released him under a deferred probation arrangement, citing his confession and his apparent distancing from the group. Prosecutors, who had sought almost three years, appealed against the sentence.
Ballout had been classified as a Gefährder, the German designation for individuals thought capable of politically motivated violence. Islamist extremism accounted for the largest share of federal terrorism investigations in Germany last year.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz condemned what he called an “abhorrent act” and said the government would examine what consequences to draw. Berlin justice senator Felor Badenberg said juvenile criminal law had to be reviewed.
Kristin Brinker, the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) leader in the Berlin state parliament, blamed migration policy of recent years and drew a comparison with the 2016 Breitscheidplatz lorry attack. Her party has demanded the systematic deportation of criminal and Islamist foreign nationals regardless of protection status.
