The suspect in the Berlin Pride event attack was shot dead in a police operation on Sunday, Berlin Police said. One person died, while 29 others were injured after a van drove into a crowd near Berlin’s annual Christopher Street Day Pride event in Tiergarten park on Saturday night.
In a post on X on Sunday, police stated that they had localised the suspect at a garden allotment in Spandau on the western outskirts of the city around 6 pm local time.
Police shot at the suspect after he charged at officers while armed with a stabbing weapon, according to the statement.
“Around 6 p.m., the suspect in yesterday’s attack in the Grosser Tiergarten was located in an allotment garden facility in #Spandau. According to current findings, he is said to have rushed toward our emergency forces with a stabbing weapon, after which police firearms were used by our SEK . Despite immediate resuscitation measures initiated by the Berlin Fire Department, he died at the scene,” the post read.
police had promptly launched a manhunt for the suspect following the incident.
According to official statements previously released by the Police and the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the suspect was identified as 21-year-old Abdul Ballout, a man known to law enforcement and linked to the Islamist spectrum.
What do we know about Abdul B?
Abdul Ballout, a with Lebanese roots, allegedly drove a white van into pedestrians on the fringes of Berlin’s Christopher Street Day event late Saturday night. He was alleged to have attacked people with a machete after driving the van into the crowd.
Authorities said earlier on Sunday, according to Bloomberg, that the suspect was a known Islamic State sympathiser who’d attempted to join the jihadist military organisation in 2025 before being taken into custody in Lebanon.
His mother was reportedly naturalised in 2002, three years before he was born.
The suspect was reportedly described as slim and around 1.90 metres tall. He has family in Berlin and was released from a young offenders’ institution in May 2026, DPA claimed.
Abdul B. had come to the attention of authorities in the past, citing a “high level of criminal offences,” Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said.
The attacker was born in Germany in 2005. He also has a Lebanese background.
Abdul convicted of ties to Islamic extremism
According to the Associated Press, Ballout traveled to Lebanon in 2025 with the goal of going to Syria to join the Islamic State group, Berlin prosecutors said Sunday.
There, he made contact with several people who were presumed members of the militant group — or at least he believed them to be, prosecutors said.
He was arrested in Lebanon last year and sentenced by a military court to three months’ imprisonment for offenses including incitement to religious and sectarian conflict.
He returned to Germany after completing his sentence, where he was arrested at the Berlin airport.
In May, a juvenile court in Berlin convicted Ballout of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state, as well as publishing Islamic State propaganda on his Instagram account and other charges, prosecutors said, as per AP.
The court handed down a suspended sentence of 1 year and 10 months in youth custody, which Berlin prosecutors had appealed.
The court said it took Ballout’s months of pre-trial detention in Germany and Lebanon into account.
It also said it considered that Ballout had confessed to the crimes, appeared to distance himself from the militant group and no actual threat had ever materialized.
He was released from detention pending the appeal.
, a journalist with CBS News, released a timeline of Abdul’s conviction since 2019. According to her, the timeline is as follows:
2019: Police have known about Abdul B for at least 7 years. In 2019 was found guilty of assaulting a victim in the schoolyard of a Berlin high school.
2022: Abdul B was convicted by The Tiergarten Local Court—Youth Lay Judges’ Court—for assault and extortion with the intent to rob, and issued a juvenile court order against him.
2024: Prosecutors say he posted prohibited ISIS propaganda on his Instagram account on June 16 and 24, 2024
2025: Prosecutors say Abdul B demonstrated a desire to join ISIS in 2025 On May 12, 2026, Abdul B., received a juvenile sentence of one year and ten months for one count of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state and two counts of violating an enforceable prohibition under the Associations Act.
2026: On May 12, 2026, the Tiergarten Local Court—Youth Lay Judges’ Court—sentenced Abdul B., in proceedings brought by the Office of the Berlin Public Prosecutor General, to a juvenile sentence of one year and ten months for one count of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state and two counts of violating an enforceable prohibition under the Associations Act.
2026: separate investigation: July 3, 2026, at his residence in Berlin-Schöneberg. The search was prompted by an initial suspicion of a violation of the Weapons Act. However, only a toy gun was found during the search, so the case was subsequently dismissed.
