Who was Abdul B? Berlin Pride terror attack suspect known to be an Islamic State sympathiser

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 Berlin. Despite immediate resuscitation measures initiated by the Berlin Fire Department, he died at the scene," the post read.

According to official statements previously released by the Berlin 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.

Abdul Ballout, a German citizen 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.

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.

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.

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.