The 21-year-old was convicted in 2025 of trying to join ISIS and is accused of breaking into his rental car. Berlin LGBTQ+ Pride parade was killed by police on Sunday, a German police chief told CBS News.
The officer said that the suspect opened fire on the police with a knife and the police opened fire and shot the suspect. The police later said that this confrontation took place in a “garden” in the area west of Spandau. He died at the scene.
Germany’s interior minister identified the suspect as Abdul Ballout, 21, a German citizen of Lebanese origin. Police described him as someone who was part of the Berlin “Islamist” incident and someone known to the authorities.
Earlier on Sunday, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said “everything we see here points to the fact that we are dealing with an attack by Islamic terrorists.”
Dobrindt said Ballout was born in Germany and that his mother was born in 2002, three years before he was born. He said the suspect had been convicted in Berlin before.
Prosecutors in Berlin said Ballout shared ISIS propaganda on Instagram in 2024 and the following year traveled to Lebanon “with the intention of going from there to Syria to join ISIS.” However, he was arrested and sentenced to three months in prison. He returned to Germany in November 2025 and was arrested in May for “preparing a serious act of violent coup d’état,” prosecutors said.
He was sentenced to one year and 10 months in prison, but this was suspended, partly in recognition of the time he spent in a Lebanese prison and pretrial detention, and partly because he pleaded guilty and distanced himself from ISIS, prosecutors said.
The police said they believe that Ballout rented the car used in the incident, but it is not yet known if he was the driver. He is described as thin, 6 feet 3 inches tall, with black hair and wearing a black hoodie and white pants.
Police searched the apartment in Berlin’s Schöneberg district early Sunday morning, but said they found no one. The wrecked car that was used to hit the crowd was left at the scene of the incident on Sunday morning.
Markus Schreiber via AP
Authorities are also working to determine whether Ballout acted alone. Investigators believe one or more people may have left the vehicle after the stop. Some victims also suffered stab wounds, making it possible that others were involved in the attack, but authorities have yet to confirm that. Dobrindt said the suspect is believed to have injured people with a machete.
An Iranian national was arrested after the attack, but police have not yet confirmed his involvement in the attack, AP reported early Sunday.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed that law enforcement will find the suspect.
“I would like to say this to the participants of Christopher Street Day here in Berlin but also throughout Germany: Don’t let yourself, don’t let yourself, be intimidated,” he said on Sunday. “These actions have only one goal: They aim to divide our society. They want to take away the most important thing we have: Our openness and our freedom.”
The fire department in Berlin said that of the injured, three were seriously injured, eight were seriously injured and five received minor injuries. The police have not honored the deceased.
RALF HIRSCHBERGER / AFP via Getty Images 
The attack happened a few hundred yards from a party near the Brandenburg Gate that was supposed to close the city’s pride festival.
On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of mourners gathered at the memorial at the statue’s gate. They hugged and put down flowers, candles, rainbow flags and homemade signs, including a cardboard saying: “the only thing stronger than hate is love.”
“It’s a dark day for the community,” Julian Miethig, who attended the event and was planning to attend the party when he heard “something bad happened” at the event, told the AP.
Increased ramming attacks
The attack is the latest in a series that has left the country facing questions about public safety.
Six people died and hundreds were injured when the car crashed Christmas market in Magdeburg in December 2024. Two months later, a car arrived union representatives in Munich, a woman and her two-year-old daughter died. Two more people were killed in March 2025 when a the car drove into the crowd in Mannheim.
The attacks have different alleged motives, but they are not together immigration, security and extremism at the center of German politics. The debates have also galvanized support for the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, and put pressure on Merz and Germany’s political parties as they try to convince voters they can keep the country safe.
