Investigators recovered a video from the phone of Abdul Rahman Ballout in which the 21-year-old swears allegiance to Islamic State, recorded on July 25, 2026, the same day he drove a rented minivan into a crowd near Berlin's Pride parade in Tiergarten park. A 65-year-old Polish woman was killed and 29 people injured in the assault, during which Ballout also attacked victims with a machete. Police shot and killed the German citizen of Lebanese descent on July 26 in a garden colony in Spandau.
Ballout had been convicted by a German juvenile court in May 2026 of planning a serious act of subversive violence and was serving a suspended sentence of one year and 10 months. He had previously been jailed in Lebanon for Islamic State membership. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, acknowledging that police had placed Ballout under surveillance, proposed tightening laws on dangerous individuals, including changes to juvenile sentencing and the use of electronic ankle monitors.