Following a deadly van attack in Berlin on July 25 that killed a 65-year-old Polish woman, Polish prosecutors launched a formal terror investigation on Monday. <\/p>\n
“A prosecutor from the Mazovian Department of the National Prosecutor’s Office initiated an investigation today into the terrorist attack that took place on July 25 in Berlin, during which a Polish citizen was murdered (Article 118a of the Penal Code),” the National Prosecutor’s Office stated in a Monday, July 27 announcement.<\/p>\n
The aforementioned article concerns, among other things, murder of a terrorist nature. This act carries a penalty of up to life imprisonment.<\/p>\n
On Saturday evening, 21-year-old Abdul Ballout, a German of Lebanese descent and an ISIS sympathizer, drove a van into a crowd of people in an alley in Berlin’s Tiergarten park, near where the Christopher Street Day parade was taking place. One person died\u2014a 65-year-old Polish citizen\u2014and 29 were injured. None of them are currently in life-threatening condition. “One person is still in the intensive care unit, but their condition is also improving,” reported a spokesperson for Berlin’s Charite hospital.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, the suspect was shot dead during a police manhunt in the Spandau allotment gardens area in the western part of the city.<\/p>\n
The death of the Polish woman was announced on Monday by Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner. According to his words, the Polish woman was staying in the German capital with her daughter. Wegner announced that he had expressed his condolences to the head of the Polish embassy in Germany, Jan Tombi\u0144ski. “I was very moved by what happened on Saturday, and my thoughts are with you, and above all with the daughter and family of the murdered woman,” Wegner said, as quoted by DPA.<\/p>\n
The Central Council of Muslims in Germany condemned the attack on Monday, emphasizing that violence against the innocent finds no justification in Islam.<\/p>\n
According to published court data, Abdul Ballout grew up in the Sch\u00f6neberg district of Berlin under the care of his parents, along with one older and two younger sisters. After finishing school, he completed several internships in craft businesses and worked for a time as a security guard.<\/p>\n
Between 2023 and 2024, he was married to a woman from Salzburg, married according to Islamic law. According to the court, in the recent period he had no income of his own and supported himself on social benefits and pocket money. According to court information, the attacker was deeply religious, prayed five times a day, and regularly attended the mosque. He was said to distance himself from extremist views and violence.<\/p>\n
The “Berliner Zeitung” newspaper, which reached out to the man’s neighbors, reported that he had a reputation as a calm and helpful boy. His family was not overly religious, although he himself, according to police assessment, was an Islamist and tried to join the so-called Islamic State. As “Der Spiegel” reported, his father forbade him to wear a long beard.<\/p>\n
On May 12, the juvenile court sentenced Abdul Ballout to 22 months of juvenile imprisonment, among other things for preparing a serious act of violence. However, the arrest warrant was revoked, and the man was released. The court did not find any risk of flight, commission of a crime, or obstruction of proceedings in his case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Following a deadly van attack in Berlin on July 25 that killed a 65-year-old Polish woman, Polish prosecutors launched a formal terror investigation on Monday. Polish Investigation Launched “A prosecutor from the Mazovian Department of the National Prosecutor’s Office initiated an investigation today into the terrorist attack that took place on July 25 in Berlin, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poland-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}