Urgent search for suspect after deadly ‘Islamist terror’ attack near Berlin Pride

ISLAMIST-LINKED SUSPECT

Dobrindt said Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, had previously been known to the authorities for a “high number” of previous crimes and for being radicalised and that he belonged to the “Islamist scene”.

Dobrindt said that Ballout had a criminal conviction and been sentenced to a year and ten months in jail, but that the sentence had been suspended.

“Everything we see here indicates that this was an Islamist terror attack,” he said.

German media reported that the conviction for “preparing a serious act of subversive violence” dated from this May and followed a trip Ballout made last year to the Middle East in a failed attempt to join IS.

Police described Ballout as thin, around 1.9m tall with black hair and dressed in a black hoodie and white trousers.

An AFP reporter saw on Sunday that police had been deployed to the suspect’s alleged address, around one kilometre south of the scene of the attack.

Dobrindt said that officers at train stations, airports and Germany’s borders had been alerted to be on the lookout for Ballout.

“WON’T BEAT US DOWN”

In a vigil on Sunday afternoon, hundreds of people packed out the square in front of the Brandenburg Gate holding rainbow flags and flowers, with more gathering on the Unter den Linden avenue next to the square.

Luka, a 23-year-old student, told AFP she hoped the attack wouldn’t be “instrumentalised” by the anti-immigration far-right.

At the scene of the attack itself, people left handwritten messages of condolence and support.

Armin Duenhoelter, 49 from Wolfsburg, who works as a drag artist, was backstage at the main stage when the celebrations were cut short.

He told AFP early Sunday that he was still “shocked” but vowed to be back for next year’s CSD “even though in the back of your mind or in your gut you might feel uneasy”.

“But we won’t let it beat us down,” he said.

Politicians in Germany and elsewhere in Europe widely condemned the attack, while the flag at the German Bundestag was ordered to be lowered to half-mast.

Before attending a memorial service for the victims in central Berlin’s Marienkirche, Chancellor Friedrich Merz appealed to those targeted by the attack to “not let yourselves be intimidated”.

“These people have only one aim – to divide our society,” he said.