Berlin Pride attack suspect with ISIS ties raised red flags, group says

The suspect in the Berlin LGBTQ+ Pride parade attack, who officials said was known to have ties to ISIS, was about to be disqualified from a deradicalization program after staff saw red flags, one of the program's leaders told CBS News on Monday.

Officials said Abdul Ballout, a 21-year-old German-born citizen with Lebanese roots, plowed a vehicle into celebrants at one of Europe's largest Pride events on Saturday night before apparently cutting others with a machete. One woman was killed, and at least 29 others were injured in the attack.

Ballout was shot and killed in a Berlin suburb on Sunday in a confrontation with police, ending a 24-hour manhunt.

He had recently been sent to a deradicalization program for screening, but the group said it was planning to tell authorities that his cooperation appeared "fake."

"Why didn't authorities start this process very much earlier? He was known for being a radical for a long time," Cornelia Lotthammer, the organization's communications director, said in an interview with CBS News.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday told reporters he wanted to know how the attack could have been prevented.

"We must do everything to protect people in Germany as best possible from such criminals, from dangerous people who for whatever reason can't be taken into custody," he said.

Police said they believe Ballout rented the vehicle used in the attack.

The woman who died in the attack was a Polish national, the foreign ministry in Warsaw said Monday.

Authorities said Ballout was born in Germany and that his mother was naturalized in 2002, three years before he was born. They also said Ballout was known to police after multiple incidents, including back in 2019 when he was found guilty of assaulting a victim in the schoolyard of a Berlin high school. Two years later, in 2022, Ballout was also convicted in juvenile court for assault and extortion with the intent to rob.

However, the first signs of extremism were in 2024 when Ballout shared two posts of ISIS propaganda on his Instagram page, according to information provided to CBS News by Berlin prosecutors.

The following year, he traveled to Lebanon "with the intention of proceeding from there to Syria to join ISIS," the prosecutors' office said. However, Ballout was arrested and jailed in Lebanon. He returned to Germany in November 2025 after completing his sentence and was arrested at the Berlin airport.

In May, a juvenile court in Berlin convicted Ballout for "preparing a serious act of subversive violence," publishing ISIS propaganda on Instagram and other charg