In the Berlin Pride Attack, Authorities Knew the Perpetrator Was Dangerous. So How Did This Happen?
Spencer Macnaughton | Uncloseted Media Weekly Newsletter
At around 10 p.m. local time on Saturday night, a man plowed through pedestrians blocks away from the closing celebration of Berlin’s Christopher Street Day, Germany’s annual Pride festival. After crashing into a tree, he continued the attack, killing a Polish woman and injuring 31 others.
The following evening, authorities tracked down the alleged attacker—21-year-old Abdul Ballout—and shot him after he approached them with a bladed weapon. He died at the scene.
Ballout, a German citizen born into a family with Lebanese roots, had been known to authorities for years. Officials say domestic intelligence had monitored him online since 2022, and prosecutors later established that he posted ISIS propaganda in 2024 and attempted to travel to Syria to join the group in 2025. After the Pride attack, investigators found an apparent claim-of-responsibility video in which he pledged allegiance to ISIS.
Ballout had prior convictions from a schoolyard assault and a robbery in 2019 and 2020. In 2024, he posted Islamic State propaganda on Instagram. And last year, he attempted to reach territory where he believed he could join the Islamic State.
On May 12, 2025 a Berlin court convicted Ballout of preparing a serious act endangering the state and offenses involving material from a prohibited organization. He received a sentence of one year and 10 months under juvenile law. The day after, he was then classified as a high-risk individual.
Despite this, he was still released under supervision. The court justified the decision by saying they took into account the nine months Ballout had already spent detained in Germany and Lebanon, his confession and his claimed departure from Islamic State ideology.
Still, prosecutors appealed and argued for a longer sentence.
According to to a joint investigation by Süddeutsche Zeitung, NDR and WDR, media reports, police monitored Ballout while he was out in the world through observation teams, telephone monitoring and placing a camera at the entrance to his residence.
He was also required to attend a deradicalization program. But one of the program’s leaders told CBS News on Monday that Ballout was about to be disqualified because staff believed his efforts to change his extreme ideology were insincere and his cooperation appeared “fake”. That has fueled questions about whether warning signs from the program were acted upon aggressively enough.
At Uncloseted, we talk a lot about Christian extremism and less so about Islamic extremism. But this is still a problem as it relates to violence against the queer community.
ISIS and its global branches have carried out thousands of attacks worldwide since the group formed, with annual tracking showing peaks exceeding 2,700 in 2021. Jihadist terrorism has resurged in Europe from the unusually low levels recorded several years ago, with Germany experiencing the most completed attacks. ISIS remains the world’s deadliest and most geographically dispersed extremist network in the world.
The queer community is not immune to this: In the 2016 Pulse Nightclub Shooting, where an armed gunman killed 49 people at an Orlando gay nightclub, the perpetrator pledged allegiance to ISIS during the attack. In October 2020, a convicted ISIS propagandist targeted two male tourists in Germany after seeing them hold hands, killing one and seriously injuring the other. And in June 2023, Austrian authorities disrupted a suspected ISIS-inspired plot against Vienna’s Rainbow Parade, arresting three young men who allegedly discussed attacking attendees.
ISIS has also directly persecuted and murdered people accused of homosexuality in territories it controlled, including the 2015 public execution of two men in Palmyra, Syria, where the victims were thrown from a building as part of the group’s broader campaign of killings against men accused of same-sex relationships.
The politicization of religious extremism often fractures our ability to have meaningful conversations about how to effectively fight back against it. Partisan talking heads get into a “both sides” war, accusing each other of being Christian-haters, Islamophobes or antisemites. But in cases of unquestionable terrorism, we should all be able to work together and toward solutions that can effectively push back against one of the world’s biggest problems.
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Investigators find apparent claim of responsibility after Berlin Pride attack (Associated Press)
German investigators found a video that appears to show the suspected attacker pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group. Authorities say the 21-year-old drove a van into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride festival and attacked people with a machete, killing a Polish woman and injuring 31 others.
Trump officials launch probe of 2 school districts over alleged testosterone vials, kissing exercise (Associated Press)
The Department of Education is investigating Denver Public Schools over allegations that a teacher required same-sex students to kiss and a Washington state district after testosterone vials appeared in a Pride Month display. The administration framed the probes as parental-rights enforcement amid its broader scrutiny of schools that accommodate LGBTQ+ and transgender students.
‘We can’t even walk through the streets’: women arrested for kissing in public on life under Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ+ law (The Guardian)
Wendy Faith and Alesi Diana Denise were released after spending five months in custody over allegations that they engaged in same-sex activity after reportedly kissing in public. Although the proceedings were discontinued, the women said they continue to face trauma, threats, financial hardship and rejection from their families.
Pride organizers vow to march in Romanian city that has blocked event four years in a row (The Guardian)
Organizers in Oradea said they would proceed with a Pride march after local authorities rejected more than 100 proposed routes, marking the fourth consecutive year the event was denied permission. More than 150 organizations from 30 countries warned that the repeated restrictions represent a threat to peaceful assembly and democratic rights.
Over the next week, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting:
🆕 TUESDAY: HIV rates are rising among young people in Canada—even as prevention and treatment have become more effective. Experts point to gaps in sex education, testing and access to care, along with stigma that continues to keep many young people from getting the help they need.
🆕 SATURDAY: On the next episode of "UNCLOSETED" with Spencer Macnaughton, I speak to Taylor Snider, a trans woman and former sex worker who recently shared her account of an encounter that she says occurred in 2015 with the late Senator Lindsey Graham, who was known for his allyship to Trump and his support of anti-LGBTQ policies. Since his death, multiple sex workers, including Snider, have come forward.
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Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chief — spencer@unclosetedmedia.com
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Another instance when the authorities were not as diligent as they should have been