A Berlin court gave the Islamist perpetrator of Saturday’s Pride attack a final chance to change his radical ways last May, arguing it cannot “be expected” that he would “commit any further crimes in the future”.
Berlin district court found 21-year-old Abdul Ballout guilty on two counts of “preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state”.
But it suspended for six months a decision on probation or a prison sentence, arguing that his previous Islamist efforts were “far from a concrete threat ... due to amateurish planning”.
Just before 10pm on Saturday, Ballout (21) rammed a white Citroen van into a crowd after the Christopher Street Day (CSD) parade. A 65-year-old Polish woman was killed and 29 others seriously injured.
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A day after Ballout was shot dead by police, shock and sadness over the attack gave way to frustration and anger over perceived failures of Berlin courts and police to assess accurately the risk posed by the perpetrator.
On Monday a frustrated chancellor Friedrich Merz said Germany’s federal system placed police affairs under state control, leaving the city state of Berlin with questions to answer.
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“I don’t understand how someone who was under [police] observation could even approach the CSD parade,” said Merz.
On Monday evening, the Bild tabloid reported that Berlin’s criminal police filmed Ballout leaving his apartment one hour before the attack.
He was under police observation after two failed attempts to join the so-called Islamic State (IS) terrorist organisation last year saw him convicted by a court in Lebanon and returned to Germany. His failed IS ambitions saw Ballout given a second conviction and a 22-month sentence last May.
A Berlin juvenile court noted Ballout’s previous convictions for robbery and extortion, his strong Muslim faith, praying five times a day, and his switch from the Shia Islam practised by his family – of Lebanese extraction – to the Sunni faith.
Despite his repeated claims to have distanced himself from IS, the court noted in its May ruling that Ballout repeatedly accessed extremist propaganda online on his father’s smartphone.
Tawfik Ballout, who now lives in Lebanon, says his son was “brainwashed” by online propaganda.
“His mother is going crazy, I haven’t slept or eaten anything since I heard the news,” he told Der Spiegel magazine.
Explaining its decision not to impose sentence immediately, the Berlin court noted that Ballout had already spent a total of nine months in remand prisons in both Lebanon and Berlin. Using provisions in German juvenile law, it ordered the “impressionable” Ballout to keep out of trouble for six months and attend anti-radicalisation courses to secure full probation.
Ballout had two preliminary meetings with counsellors from Berlin’s “violence prevention network”, who described the 21-year-old as “friendly but distant”.
Counsellors were scheduled to tell Ballout on Monday that he would not be accepted into their deradicalisation programme.
“There was no way in to him,” said Thomas Mücke, director of the group. “He didn’t co-operate. He didn’t answer key questions about matters of radicalisation via Islamism and Islam.”
Saturday’s tragedy, and details of Ballout’s court case, have ramped up debate over the use of juvenile law in extremist cases and supercharged Berlin’s political parties in advance of state elections in September.
On Monday a local branch of the Left Party came under fire for an Instagram post blaming “right-wing and conservative actors” for preparing the ground for the attacks, with no mention of Islamist extremism.
The centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) said the post was proof of a “dangerous alliance between Islamists and the left-wing scene” in Berlin.
