Archbishop of Berlin condemns hate crime in German capital

By Roberto Paglialonga

“What a terrible event! Hatred must not win.”

Archbishop Heiner Koch of Berlin expressed this to the German Catholic news agency KNA about the attack that, on the evening of Saturday, 25 July, left one person dead and about thirty injured in the German capital, after a minivan drove at high speed into the crowd of participants at the city’s Pride event.

EU united against those who sow fear and division

Representatives of the European Union also condemned the episode.

In a post in German on social media, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote, “I express my deepest condolences to the victims of the attack at the Christopher Street Day parade (the Pride event in the German capital, editor’s note) in Berlin, and to their families and friends. Everyone should be able to live, love and defend their rights without fear.

“Hatred and violence,” she continued, “have no place in our societies.”

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola expressed the same view.

“Today,” she expressed, “our thoughts are with the victims of the attack in Berlin, their families, and all those taking part in Christopher Street Day. Hatred and violence have no place in our Europe of freedom and respect. We will continue to stand united against those who seek to sow fear and division.”

Attack on Saturday evening

Berlin experienced a night of terror after a day of celebrations featuring concerts, parades, and music.

At around 10 p.m., a white minivan was seen entering the Tiergarten city park and driving into the crowd that had gathered there, causing the death of one person—a woman, according to Der Spiegel—and injuring another sixteen, some of them very seriously.

Authorities have identified the suspected attacker and released his photograph. He is said to be a 21-year-old man identified as Abdul B., who, according to the DPA news agency, was released from a juvenile prison in May 2026.

He had reportedly already known to police, who believe he has links to “radical Islamist circles”: he is said to be a supporter of the so-called Islamic State (IS).

According to authorities, he fled on foot after the white van, having run over the people in the street, crashed into a tree. 

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German ‌police said the 21-year-old suspect was shot dead on Sunday.

The reaction of the German authorities

“An abominable act!” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz wrote on X, describing it as “an attack on our society.”

“We are open and freedom-loving—and we will preserve and defend that. The matter will be fully clarified and prosecuted with the utmost severity,” he added.

“It is an attack on our free and open society,” Berlin Mayor Kai Wagner likewise said after visiting the scene of last night’s attack today. “We will not allow our way of life and the way we live together to be taken away from us,” he further commented.

Incidents of violence in Germany in recent years

Berlin has already been the scene of attacks and episodes of violence in recent years. In February 2025, a few days before the general election, a Spanish tourist was stabbed near the Holocaust Memorial. At the beginning of March, a young Syrian man was sentenced to 13 years in prison for that jihadist attack.

The December 2016 attack at the southern end of the Tiergarten also had the same ideological background, when a Tunisian national killed 12 people by driving a truck into a Christmas market.

For another vehicle attack on a Christmas market, which took place in Magdeburg, in the east of the country, at the end of 2024 and left six people dead and more than 300 injured, a Saudi psychiatrist was sentenced to life imprisonment at the end of June.

At the beginning of May, meanwhile, a 33-year-old German citizen was committed to a psychiatric hospital after driving a car into several pedestrians on a shopping street in the centre of Leipzig, killing two people and injuring six.