BERLIN, July 27 (Reuters) – The 21-year-old suspect in a weekend attack on the Berlin Pride celebration in which one person was killed and more than two dozen wounded was shot dead by police on Sunday after a nationwide manhunt.
The suspect has been identified as Abdul Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots who was born and raised in Berlin, according to German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt.
In May, Ballout was convicted of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state and was sentenced under juvenile law to one year and 10 months in prison, according to prosecutors.
He was released under the supervision of a probation officer for six months after the court deferred a decision on whether to suspend the sentence. Prosecutors had appealed the ruling, seeking a longer sentence.
Prosecutors said the court also cited his largely cooperative testimony, his stated distancing from Islamic State and the absence of any concrete danger resulting from the offences in determining the sentence.
According to prosecutors, the case centred on allegations that Ballout sought in 2025 to join Islamic State.
They said he first unsuccessfully tried to travel via Turkey to Mauritania and later flew from Berlin to Lebanon in May 2025, intending ultimately to reach Syria and join the militant group.
While in Lebanon, he reportedly made contact with several individuals whom he believed to be Islamic State members.
He was arrested in Lebanon in July 2025 and later sentenced by a military court to three months in prison on charges including inciting religious and sectarian conflict.
Returning to Germany in November 2025, he was arrested at the Berlin Brandenburg Airport and remained in custody until his May conviction.
Ballout had also been convicted in Germany in February 2022 under juvenile law for assault and robbery-related offences committed as a teenager.
More recently, investigators searched his home in Berlin’s Schoeneberg district on July 3 on suspicion of violating Germany’s weapons laws. Prosecutors said only a toy gun was found and that the case was subsequently dropped.
(Reporting by Miranda Murray; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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