Suspect in Berlin Pride attack shot dead by police
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A forensic police van on July 26 driving towards the scene in Berlin where police had shot an armed man who was a suspect in a ramming attack the day before.
PHOTO: AFP
BERLIN – German police said a 21-year-old man with a record of Islamist extremist activity was shot dead on July 26, a day after he allegedly drove a minivan into people near Berlin’s Pride celebrations, killing one person.
The ramming attack happened in the Tiergarten park near the Brandenburg Gate at about 10pm on July 25 (4am on July 26, Singapore time), not far from one of Europe’s biggest annual LGBTQ celebrations, Christopher Street Day.
The authorities said that in addition to the one death, 29 people were injured, some by a bladed weapon the attacker wielded.
“Around 6pm, the suspect involved in yesterday’s attack in Tiergarten was located at an allotment garden complex in Spandau,” Berlin police wrote on X, referring to an area in Berlin’s westernmost borough where residents cultivate garden plots.
“According to initial findings, he ran towards officers while armed with a bladed weapon; police... subsequently opened fire. Despite immediate resuscitation efforts by the Berlin Fire Department, he died at the scene.”
Dagmar Euent and Juliane Gotzler, who have a garden plot there, said they heard several shots and were told by police to stay inside their garden hut.
Merz calls for defence of freedom
Berlin police had identified the suspect as Abdul B., 21, and published his picture, asking the public for information on his whereabouts.
Berlin police have identified the suspect as a 21-year-old man called Abdul B., who has a history of criminal offences.
PHOTO: POLIZEI BERLIN
The suspect had “attracted attention in the past through a high number of criminal offences, through radicalisation, through membership of the Islamist scene”, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said earlier, adding that the suspect was a German citizen of Lebanese heritage, born in Germany in 2005.
Police investigating the vehicle that crashed into a crowd near Berlin's annual Christopher Street Day Pride parade on the evening of July 25.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The Tiergarten attack was the latest in a series of vehicle attacks on crowds in Germany in recent years that have intensified debate around security and immigration amid a surge in support for the far-right.
Ahead of a memorial service at St Mary’s Church in Berlin, centre-right Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed consequences and urged Germans not to be intimidated, affirming that the country would stand united in defence of its freedom.
“We will defend the freedom, openness and liberal spirit of our lives and our society with everything we can do,” he said.
Thousands of people, some carrying the LGBT rainbow flag, attended a vigil at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. Some carried placards with slogans such as “Hatred kills”, while others cried and hugged each other.
At the Tiergarten park, people lit candles and left flowers.
Candles and flowers placed in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on July 26, after one person died and 29 others were injured in an attack on an LGBTQ celebration.
PHOTO: EPA
Calls for action
There were calls across the political spectrum for Germany to tighten laws and crack down on Islamic radicalism.
Green politician and Bundestag Vice-President Omid Nouripour wrote on X that Germany must stand against “murderous Islamism”.
Daniel Peters, a regional leader of the centre-right CDU party, said on X that Islamic State “supporters must not walk free in Germany”.
Security sources told Reuters the suspect had been released from juvenile detention only two months ago.
Asked about reports that the suspect had received a suspended sentence, Dobrindt told broadcaster ZDF: “It would certainly have been advisable to place this individual in custody.”
The security sources said the suspect was known to domestic intelligence and was among the hundreds of people classed as potentially dangerous, a label that usually leads to scrutiny or monitoring.
The authorities have said the suspect had previously been convicted of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state.
A girl lighting a candle on July 26 as people gathered at the Brandenburg Gate, after a deadly crowd-ramming incident near a Pride event in Berlin.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Merz under pressure
The attack comes at a sensitive time for Merz’s unpopular coalition government, which is going through a bruising Cabinet reshuffle as critics accuse it of being ineffective.
State elections take place in two months, with the far-right opposition party Alternative for Germany (AfD) campaigning on issues including immigration and security in a bid to secure control of a regional government for the first time.
The AfD was quick to comment on the attack.
“We will not allow religious extremists to divide our country with violence and intolerance!” AfD co-chief Tino Chrupalla said on X.
In May, a man believed to have mental health problems drove into a pedestrian zone in Leipzig, killing two people and seriously injuring three.
In 2016, Anis Amri, a Tunisian who had links to Islamist militants and whose asylum application was rejected, hijacked a truck, killed its driver and drove it into a busy Christmas market, killing 11 people and injuring dozens. He was shot dead by police in Italy four days later. REUTERS
