Suspect in Deadly Berlin Pride Attack Had Been Investigated for Terrorism Plans
The man, 21, was still at large Sunday after a van rammed into a crowd in the German capital, killing one and injuring more than a dozen
German police are searching for a 21-year-old suspect after a van plowed into a Berlin LGBTQ festival, leaving at least one dead and 16 wounded.
Authorities are treating the incident as a terrorist attack, and police said the suspect is a known Islamist.
The attack is expected to rekindle a debate over security and immigration, which could bolster the far-right Alternative for Germany.
The main suspect in a car-ramming attack that left at least one dead in Berlin had previously been investigated for planning a terrorist attack, a person familiar with the investigation said.
Authorities are on the hunt for Abdul Ballout, a 21-year-old German citizen of Lebanese descent and the main suspect for the attack at the margins of the Christopher Street Day LGBTQ festival at the center of the German capital.
A white van plowed into a crowd of people who were leaving the festival shortly before 10 p.m. local time on Saturday in what authorities are treating as a terrorist attack.
The small van later crashed into a tree and was found abandoned. Police said some passersby sustained what appeared to be knife wounds. Several of the wounded were in life-threatening condition, the police said.
Police called on the public to report any sighting of Ballout, described as about 6 feet tall, slimly built, with black hair and wearing a black hoodie and white pants. They only identified the man as Abdul B., in keeping with German privacy laws.
Ballout had been detained in Lebanon and extradited to Germany before being convicted of a crime in Berlin in May, the person familiar with the investigation said.
The man has a history of low-level criminality and it wasn’t clear whether the May conviction was related to his terrorism investigation, or why he wasn’t serving his sentence at the time of the attack.
Germany’s Bild daily first reported about Ballout’s criminal background and previous conviction.
The person said authorities were investigating eyewitness reports that a second suspect was sitting in the van at the time of the attack. Organizers ended the Christopher Street Day festival after the incident, and police said the crowd dispersed quickly.
“What a disgusting act in Berlin,” Chancellor Friedrich Merz wrote on X. “The crime will be investigated and pursued with the full force of the law.”
The suspect’s alleged Islamist links could rekindle a debate about security and immigration, presenting Merz’s deeply unpopular government with its latest challenge.
Pollsters attribute Merz’s unpopularity largely to his failure to reboot a stagnant economy with rapidly rising unemployment. His cabinet has also struggled in the past week with a reshuffle interrupted by the withdrawal of a ministerial candidate.
Germany has enjoyed a respite from politically motivated violence after a string of attacks, mostly perpetrated by recent Muslim migrants, in the run-up to the last election in February 2025.
Merz’s government has since cracked down on immigration, bringing the number of new arrivals sharply down in one of the few policy areas where pollsters said voters were crediting the government with success.
Still, the fact that the main suspect was known to authorities will likely raise questions about why he and thousands of others with similar profiles were allowed to walk freely without tight surveillance.
Such questions could further bolster the far-right anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, or AfD, ahead of key elections in the fall.
The AfD is now Germany’s most popular party in all opinion polls and is on course to win two state elections in the country’s former Communist east in September. In the state of Saxony-Anhalt, it could even garner an absolute majority, allowing it to govern alone, a rarity in Germany given the country’s proportional electoral system.
Germany has suffered a number of vehicle rammings in the past. In December 2016, an Islamist terrorist drove a stolen truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, leaving 13 dead. In 2024, an anti-Islam activist from Saudi Arabia killed six people and injured more than 300 after driving his car into another Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg.
Markets, festivals and other outdoor events are now heavily fortified, with most access routes blocked by vehicles or concrete barriers. This may explain why Saturday’s attack happened just outside the festival area.