Thin, about 5 feet 10 inches tall, with black hair and wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and white pants. This is the identikit provided by the Berlin police of the suspect in the van attack at the Gay Pride, identified by the name of Abdul Ballout. A 21-year-old German citizen of Lebanese origins, the man was a supporter of the Islamic State, and died following a shootout with the special forces who had found him in a garden shed in the Spandau district of Berlin. The police officers were attacked and returned fire.
His was a highly respectable terrorist CV. According to the German Interior Minister, Alexander Dobrindt, Ballout “had attracted attention due to a high number of crimes, radicalization and his links to Islamist circles”.
Judicial precedents
The Berlin prosecutor’s office illustrated the suspect’s judicial precedents in a note: the man had been convicted in May for attempting to join the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria via Lebanon, where he was arrested, convicted and finally expelled to Germany. Although Abdul Ballout had received a prison sentence for a serious act of violence against the German state, he had not been imprisoned; the prosecutor’s office explained that this happened because the six months spent in pre-trial detention in Germany and the three months of detention in Lebanon were counted, in addition to the fact that the man had admitted the charges and apparently distanced himself from the jihadist group.
The deradicalization path
Second Die Weltthe suspect was scheduled to attend 26 meetings at a counseling center specializing in deradicalization and prevention of extremism. The reason was some of his posts on social media in which he declared his support for an unspecified terrorist group. Ballout would participate in the first two meetings, June 15 and July 9, on a voluntary basis. A third meeting was due to be held on July 27. Then a decision would have to be made whether or not to continue with the consultancy. It was currently in the so-called ‘evaluation process’.
Given his dangerousness, the German authorities had warned that Ballout should not be approached under any circumstances and that it was necessary to avoid any direct contact with the suspect.
The accomplices hypothesis
While the investigations continue across the board and the motive and dynamics of the attack are being investigated, at the same time we are trying to understand whether or not Ballout had accomplices who could have helped him, which would suggest that he did not act like a lone wolf.