An adherent of the “religion of peace” drove a white van into Germany’s largest annual LGBT Pride event on Saturday, killing one and injuring at least 29 individuals before smashing into a tree nearby Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.
After plowing through the pro-diversity festivities, homegrown terrorist Abdul Ballout — a 21-year-old German citizen with foreign ties — attacked passersby with a knife, then fled the scene, according to German interior minister Alexander Dobrindt.
‘The rainbow has suffered a crack today.’
Yannicka Riebensahm, a Berlin-based performer and activist who performs under the name Nyya, spoke at the vigil held on Saturday evening for victims of the attack and complained about the identity of the suspect, noting that she had hoped it was not a foreigner “but a Christian white person” who had mowed down the non-straight revelers.
Other attendees at the vigil waved LGBT imperial colors, and one held a sign that said, “From grief, to anger, to resistance!”
Some Berlin LGBT organizers have demanded that the Islamic terrorist attack not be “instrumentalized for political ends.”
Ballout, who was born in Germany three years after his mother’s arrival from Lebanon in 2002, was previously known to police, having committed multiple crimes, including aggravated assault and predatory extortion, and belonging to the “Islamist scene,” said Dobrindt.
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The LGBT event before a Muslim terrorist drove into it. RALF HIRSCHBERGER/AFP/Getty Images
Tawfik, the terrorist’s father who lives in Lebanon, told Der Spiegel that his son had been “brainwashed.”
According to German prosecutors, the suspect traveled to Lebanon last year with the aim of joining ISIS, reported PBS. Ballout successfully met up with what he figured for militants, but before he could wage jihad, he was arrested by Lebanese authorities and sentenced by a military court to three months in prison.
Ballout subsequently returned to Germany and was arrested at the airport, according to PBS. In May, he was convicted both of plotting a serious act of violence threatening national security and of publishing ISIS propaganda.
Dobrindt told reporters, however, that Ballout’s original sentence was suspended. Instead of serving one year and 10 months in youth custody, the terrorist was released from detention within days of his conviction pending an appeal of his sentence by prosecutors.
Following the attack, Andre Lehmann, a top official at Germany’s largest non-straight NGO, LSVD+, said in a statement, “The rainbow has suffered a crack today. This is a dark day for our community and our country. Our thoughts are with everyone directly affected.”
The City of Berlin said that the motto of this year’s Christopher Street Day parade was “Taking a stand is hot,” and that organizers were urging people “to take a stand for an open society, for democratic values, and for the equal rights of queer people.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated early on Sunday, “This is an attack on our society.”
“The act will be investigated and pursued with the utmost severity,” added Merz.
On Sunday, German special forces caught up with the suspect in the greater Berlin area. Ballout attacked police, then “suffered fatal injuries and died at the scene.”
Following the attack, Alternative for Germany — or AFD, an ascendant rightist party that the German establishment has for years subjected to lawfare for sounding the alarm about the fallout of mass migration — blasted Merz’s ruling CDU Party for “once again shirking responsibility.”
AFD said that contrary to the suggestion by elements of the CDU, “the problem is not ‘hate and incitement on the net,’ but rather a far too lax approach to Islamist threats and all those who have been massively endangering the lives and security of citizens in Germany for eleven years now — let into the country by the CDU.”
AFD reiterated its demand for “the immediate detention of Islamist threats and consistent deportations.”
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Islam, Germany, Lebanon, Berlin, Isis, Pride, Lgbt, Politics