Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday said the federal government will take action in response to the vehicle ramming that struck participants at a Pride celebration in Berlin, as debate intensified over why the suspected driver had not been behind bars.
The incident occurred on Saturday evening in the Tiergarten park near the Brandenburg Gate during Christopher Street Day festivities. One person died in the attack; Poland's foreign minister identified the victim as a Polish woman in her sixties. German tabloid Bild reported that the woman had been attending the celebrations with her daughter, who was also injured.
Police later identified the suspected attacker as 21-year-old German citizen Abdul Ballout. Authorities said Ballout was born and raised in Berlin and had Lebanese roots, according to Germany's interior minister. He was shot dead by police on Sunday after officers said he ran toward them armed with a bladed weapon.
Ballout had recently been convicted in May of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state and was sentenced under juvenile law to one year and ten months in prison, prosecutors said. The court deferred a decision on whether to suspend the sentence, and he was released under the supervision of a probation officer for six months. Prosecutors appealed the ruling seeking a longer term.
Speaking at his party's press conference, Merz cautioned that it was too soon to draw political conclusions but pledged that the response would balance prudence with firmness. He is reported as saying: "It is still too early to say what political conclusions we will draw from this brutal attack. ... We will have to respond with prudence, but also with determination."
Merz highlighted that monitoring convicted offenders falls under the responsibility of the regional states' police forces, but said he had tasked the federal interior minister with examining whether jurisdictional changes are warranted. The chancellor also questioned how the suspect was able to approach the event despite being purportedly under constant surveillance.
In a related development on Monday, the German federal prosecutors' office said a second person who had been detained in connection with the attack has been released. Spiegel magazine, citing sources, reported that authorities freed the individual because initial suspicion that he had been a passenger in the vehicle used in the ramming could not be confirmed.
The sequence of the attack, the suspect's recent conviction and supervised release, and the swift police response that ended with the suspect's death have together prompted public and political scrutiny over supervision and enforcement practices by regional authorities. Officials at the federal level have been asked to review whether changes in oversight or jurisdiction are needed.