The author of the attack on the Berlin Pride March had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group in a video on Saturday, the same day of the events, the daily Bild website reported on Tuesday, relying on anonymous security sources.
• Also read: How a radicalized Islamist was able to hit Berlin’s Pride parade despite police surveillance
• Also read: Attack on the Berlin Pride parade: Fierté Montréal strengthens its security
According to Germany’s most widely read media, investigators found this video on the cell phone of Abdul Rahman Ballout, a German citizen of Lebanese origin suspected of having driven into the crowd at the pride parade on Saturday evening, killing one person and injuring around thirty people.
Contacted by AFP, the German prosecutor’s office confirmed that the author’s phone “was found in the car”, left at the scene of the attack, “and that it contained a video in which a masked person, who is likely to be Abdul B., pledges allegiance to ISIS”.
For his part, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt spoke of “a possible protest video” that appeared on “the cell phone that was found in the vehicle used during the incident.”
“We assume that the video shows the suspect, hooded in these images,” he added during a press briefing, indicating that “links with ISIS” were among the digital data found in the young man’s home.
The 21-year-old man, who fled on foot with a machete, was killed on Sunday, after around 20 hours of tracking, in a police operation in another district of Berlin.
Investigators also discovered a machete sheath in his vehicle, without finding the blade, adds Bild.
The assailant was known to the authorities: he had been sentenced in May to a suspended prison sentence of one year and ten months “for preparing a serious act of violence undermining the security of the State” after trying to join the jihadist group IS in Syria via Lebanon.
But he then claimed to have distanced himself from IS and the court took into account his six months of pre-trial detention in Germany and his three months in prison in Lebanon, the country where he was convicted for his membership in this jihadist organization.
Since his career was revealed on Sunday, criticism has increased in Germany regarding judicial laxity.
According to the German weekly Die Zeit, two cousins of Abdul Rahman Ballout fought for ISIS. They would be the sons of one of his aunts – his father’s sister – called Hanan and wife of Omar Bakri Muhammad, who also bears the name of Omar Bakri Fustuq, an Islamist preacher known for a long time in the United Kingdom.
The newspaper claims to get its information from German investigators who would have been informed by their Lebanese counterparts.
