A white rented minivan drove into pedestrians near Tiergarten park, close to the Brandenburg Gate, during Christopher Street Day in Berlin on Saturday evening, killing one woman and injuring at least 29 other people. Police said several people were also stabbed, and officials believed the blade could have been a machete. The suspect, named by German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt as 21-year-old Abdul Ballout, was later shot dead by police after a massive manhunt.
The State Arrives After the Damage
Berlin’s Pride march, one of Europe’s biggest LGBTQ+ celebrations, became another scene where public space, policing and panic collided. The vehicle struck multiple people shortly before 22:00 local time, then crashed into a tree. Berlin police and prosecutors asked the public to avoid direct contact with Ballout, warning that he may have been armed and dangerous. Thousands of police, including officers from surrounding German states, joined the search across the city. The operation ended in Spandau, a western borough of Berlin, where officers opened fire when Ballout rushed at them with a knife. Police later confirmed he was dead.
Dobrindt said evidence pointed to an Islamist terror attack and described Ballout as someone who had previously drawn attention to himself through a high volume of criminal offences, radicalisation and affiliation with the Islamist scene. The Berlin public prosecutor’s office then laid out a record that reads like a file moving through the machinery of punishment and surveillance. In May 2025, prosecutors said he travelled via Turkey to Lebanon with the intention of joining the Islamic State group in Syria. While in Lebanon, he allegedly made contact with several individuals he believed were members of Islamic State. He was arrested in Lebanon in July 2025 and sentenced to three months in prison for incitement to religious and sectarian conflict.
A File, a Border, a Prison
Ballout returned to Germany in November 2025, where he was arrested at Berlin Brandenburg Airport and held in pre-trial detention. In May this year, he was sentenced to one year and 10 months in prison for preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state. The decision was deferred for six months and he was placed under the supervision of a parole officer. He had also previously been convicted of assault and robbery in 2022, and of robbing a victim of headphones in 2020. The state had already processed him through arrest, sentencing, supervision and deferred punishment. It still ended with a dead suspect and a city locked into a manhunt.
The attack forced organisers to cut short the Pride event and cancel related gatherings, including a breakfast market at a popular food hall, a post-parade clean-up and a clean-up event due to take place at Tiergarten park. A community vigil was held at Pariser Platz, the square around the Brandenburg Gate, where attendees held a moment of silence for the victims and waved pride flags. That was the public response on the ground: grief, flags, silence, and the abrupt end of a march that had already filled the city centre with more than 80 floats and 50 groups on foot.
Officials, Flags and the Usual Script
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig attended a memorial service at St Mary’s Church. Merz visited the scene in Tiergarten park and later said Germany would defend the freedom and openness of its life and would not allow the poison of terrorism to affect society. Berlin’s mayor, Kai Wegner, called the assault an attack on the city’s free and cosmopolitan society. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed sympathy to the victims and said the Pride event stood for freedom, dignity and equality, the fundamental values of the EU. Other European leaders also voiced solidarity, including the prime ministers of the Netherlands and Italy, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron. Britain’s foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, said he was horrified by the attack and had spoken to his counterpart, Johann Wadephul, to convey the UK’s solidarity.
Christopher Street Day first took place in West Berlin in 1979 and takes its name from Christopher Street in New York’s Greenwich Village, commemorating the 1969 Stonewall uprising against police raids and harassment. Berlin authorities said up to 1 million people participate in the city’s CSD parade each year. This year’s parade ran under the motto taking a stand is hot, which organisers said was in response to increasing hostility to LGBTQ+ people in Germany. The march moved past Potsdamer Platz and the Victory Column monument in Tiergarten, ending at the Brandenburg Gate. Then the police search, the official statements and the memorial service took over. The city’s public life was reduced, once again, to a security operation and a round of solemn declarations from the people who run it.