Berlin Pride attacker pledged himself to ISIS
· Toronto Sun
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The suspect in the deadly attack on a Berlin Pride event pledged allegiance to the terror group ISIS in a video, German authorities say.
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The federal prosecutor’s office said Tuesday that investigators found a clip on a phone in the rented minivan he rammed into a crowd of people on Saturday that killed one person and injured 31. The suspect, Abdul Ballout, 21, was shot dead by police the next day. Authorities say he attacked police with an edged weapon before they shot him.
Weapons, links to ISIS
The person in the video is masked, but authorities assume it’s Ballout. Investigators are analyzing the phone, along with other mobile devices found at Ballout’s home, where links to ISIS were found in the devices’ data storage.
Also inside the van was a sheath for the machete Ballout was thought to have used to attack others after he drove into the crowd and abandoned the vehicle, according to German newspaper Bild .
Known terror operative
Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, was known to police and the criminal justice system. He went to Lebanon last year to try and join ISIS, making contact with several members of the terror group. He was sentenced to three months in jail in that country for joining them. He was then returned to Germany and was convicted by a juvenile court of “planning a subversive act of violence” and was given a suspended sentence of one year and 10 months.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz wanted to know how the suspect was able to conduct the attack while supposedly being under constant surveillance.
“I cannot understand how I can track my mobile phone from anywhere in the world — or even use it to determine the location of my iPad, for instance — yet it is supposedly impossible, or technically unfeasible, for security authorities in Germany to determine the whereabouts of individuals classified as security threats to that same extent,” he said at a recent political rally.