BERLIN – A second suspect detained in connection with a deadly vehicle-ramming attack on Berlin’s Pride celebrations over the weekend has been released, the German federal prosecutors’ office said on July 27.
“We continue to investigate broadly,” the prosecutors’ office told Reuters and declined to comment further.
Der Spiegel on July 27 cited sources as saying that the authorities released the person because initial suspicion that he was a passenger in the white vehicle at the time of the attack could not be upheld.
The attack, killing one person, happened in the Tiergarten park near the Brandenburg Gate at about 10pm on July 25 (4am, July 26 in Singapore) not far from annual Christopher Street Day (CSD) celebrations.
The suspected driver, a 21-year-old Berlin-born German citizen of Lebanese descent with a record of Islamist extremist activity, was shot dead in Berlin on July 26.
Abdul Ballout was tracked by police to an allotment, or community garden, in the capital’s Spandau district, a police spokesman said.
Ballout “rushed toward our emergency forces with a stabbing weapon, after which police firearms were used by our SEK Berlin”, the spokesman said on X, referring to the Special Task Force.
“Despite immediate resuscitation measures initiated by the Berlin Fire Department, he died at the scene.”
The shooting capped a daylong manhunt that stretched from central Berlin to the airport and Germany’s borders, with the authorities publicising Ballout’s photo and taking the unusual step of releasing his full name.
The deadly van attack was an act of terror, striking at the heart of Germany’s open and free society, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on July 26.
The following day, he said that it was still too early to answer the question of what political consequences will be drawn from the attack.
“What is also clear, however, is that we cannot stop at mere statements. We will have to respond with prudence, but also with determination,” said Merz at a party press conference.
The German authorities faced tough questions on July 27 over Ballout was at large despite his Islamist radicalisation and recent conviction for “preparing an act of violence”.
He is believed to have ploughed a rented minivan into a crowd before attacking people with a machete, killing one woman and wounding 29.
Prosecutors said Ballout had long been known to the justice system and had previous convictions for causing bodily harm, extortion and robbery.
He had also travelled to Lebanon in a failed attempt to join the militant group ISIS in Syria but was arrested and spent three months in jail in Lebanon before his repatriation.
Most recently he was convicted in May of “planning a serious act of subversive violence” and given a jail sentence of one year and 10 months in jail.
However the sentence was suspended, partially in recognition of the time he had already spent in jail in Lebanon and his pre-trial detention, and because he had admitted to the crimes and claimed to have distanced himself from IS.
Marc Henrichmann, a lawmaker from Merz’s centre-right CDU who chairs the parliamentary committee supervising intelligence agencies, said that tougher measures were necessary in such cases.
“The freedoms of extremists and Islamists must not be given undue value, especially when people’s lives are at risk,” he told the Handelsblatt newspaper.
Abdul Ballout, the suspected driver was shot dead in Berlin on July 26.
PHOTO: AFP
The head of Germany’s police officers’ association, Dirk Peglow, also charged that the justice system had been too lax with Ballout.
“With people who pose such a threat, the end of their time in detention must not be the end of state supervision,” he said, speaking to the same business daily.
The interior minister in the southern state of Bavaria, Joachim Herrmann, meanwhile labelled the decision to suspend Ballout’s sentence “catastrophic”.
“The judges who have to take such decisions must know the responsibility they have for people’s security,” he told public broadcaster BR.
Up to one million people participate in Berlin’s CSD parade each year, according to city authorities.
The march through Berlin’s green heart, the Tiergarten park, brings together groups and supporters campaigning for the rights and inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex people.
The event – first held in 1979 – takes its name from Christopher Street in New York’s Greenwich Village, commemorating the 1969 Stonewall uprising against police raids and harassment. REUTERS, AFP, BLOOMBERG
