Merz: 'Still too early to say' what conclusions to draw

Merz vows action after Berlin Pride attack amid outcry that suspect was not in jail

Assailant, German of Lebanese descent, was recently convicted of preparing violent act, was suspected of trying to join ISIS, but was out of prison; far right calls for crackdown

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday vowed to take action in response to the deadly vehicle ramming attack on the Berlin Pride parade as debate erupted in Germany over why the suspected driver was not in prison.

The suspect, who was shot dead by police on Sunday, was identified as 21-year-old German citizen Abdul Ballout, who was recently convicted of preparing a violent act and was believed to have tried to join the Islamic State jihadist group.

“It is still too early to say what political conclusions we will draw from this brutal attack. … We will have to respond with prudence, but also with determination,” Merz said at a party press conference.

One person was killed in the attack in the Tiergarten park near the Brandenburg Gate on Saturday evening, whom Poland’s foreign minister identified as a Polish woman in her 60s.

Bild, a German newspaper, said the victim was visiting the Christopher Street Day celebrations with her daughter, who herself suffered injuries. In total, 29 people were wounded in the attack.

The suspected attacker, Ballout, was a German citizen with Lebanese roots and was born and raised in Berlin, according to Germany’s interior minister.

Police said they opened fire on him on Sunday when he ran toward officers armed with a bladed weapon.

Last year Ballout was detained in Lebanon during a failed attempt to fight for ISIS in Syria. A Lebanese judicial source told AFP that Ballout was sentenced to three months in jail there for belonging to ISIS.

He was detained on his return to Germany and in May was convicted of “planning a serious act of subversive violence” and given a jail sentence of one year and 10 months.

However, the sentence was suspended, partly in recognition of the time he had already spent in jail in Lebanon and his pre-trial detention, and because he had admitted to the crimes and claimed to have distanced himself from ISIS.

“The danger from this man was underestimated,” Rolf Tophoven of the Institute for Terrorism Research and Security Policy told AFP.

The attack comes two months before Berliners elect a new assembly for the city-state, with some polls predicting the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) could emerge as the biggest party in a crowded field.

In an X post, the AfD’s co-leader Alice Weidel accused Merz of insufficient action against “migrant violence” and said her party was “ready to act.”

Lawmaker Marc Henrichmann from Merz’s center-right CDU, who chairs the parliamentary committee supervising intelligence agencies, said that tougher measures were necessary in such cases.

“The freedoms of extremists and Islamists must not be given undue value, especially when people’s lives are at risk,” he told the Handelsblatt newspaper.

The head of Germany’s police officers’ association, Dirk Peglow, also charged that the justice system had been too lax with Ballout.

“With people who pose such a threat, the end of their time in detention must not be the end of state supervision,” he said, speaking to the same business daily.

Speaking on radio station Deutschlandfunk, Guner Balci — the integration commissioner for Berlin’s Neukoelln district, home to a large Muslim population — called for the closure of the most radical mosques “to send a clear signal.”

Merz said police surveillance of convicted criminals was the responsibility of regional states, but added he had tasked the federal interior minister with looking into changing jurisdiction.

The German leader also questioned how the suspect was able to approach the event despite supposedly being under constant surveillance.

A second suspect detained in connection with the attack has been released, the German federal prosecutors’ office said on Monday.

Spiegel magazine cited sources as saying that authorities released the person because initial suspicion that he was a passenger in the ramming vehicle attack could not be confirmed.