Germany is considering banning terrorists from receiving suspended sentences after the Berlin Pride attacker avoided jail despite trying to join the Islamic State.
Abdul Ballout, 21, drove a van into the Christopher Street Day Pride Parade in Berlin, killing one woman and injuring 29 others in what was described as an “Islamist” act of terror.
It has since emerged that he was convicted of terror offences in May, but did not spend any time in prison, because his 22-month sentence was suspended.
Now, ministers have ordered a review of how and to whom suspended sentences are handed out. Early suggestions include exempting anyone convicted of terror-related offences.
“It is certainly incomprehensible that, given the level of danger involved in this case, a suspended sentence was imposed,” Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said.
Friedrich Merz, the German Chancellor, also criticised his country’s security services.
“I cannot understand how I can track my mobile phone from anywhere in the world – or even use it to determine the location of my iPad, for instance – yet it is supposedly impossible, or technically unfeasible, for security authorities in Germany to determine the whereabouts of individuals classified as security threats to that same extent,” he said on Monday.
“We will have to answer the question of how it is that a man with this profile could get close to the parade unhindered and commit this sort of attack.”
Ballout, who was shot dead by police after a 20-hour manhunt, travelled to Lebanon last year in an attempt to join Islamic State.
He was arrested and sentenced by a military court to three months’ imprisonment for offences including incitement to religious and sectarian conflict, before being deported to Germany.
He was arrested on arrival in Berlin for preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state, as well as publishing IS propaganda on his Instagram account.
The public prosecutor general’s office had pushed for a three-year sentence, but the Tiergarten district court applied juvenile law to hand down a sentence of one year and 10 months.
Under German law, as in the UK, a judge can suspend a custodial sentence so the offender serves probation instead of jail time.
“We know that he committed a large number of offences, that he sympathised with terror, that there was also a conviction that was suspended on probation, and that the public prosecutor’s office lodged an appeal against it,” Dobrindt said.
“The question is currently being strongly raised as to how a sentence can actually be suspended on probation for someone who has been identified as a security threat.”
Suspended sentences were originally codified in Germany to prioritise resocialisation over retribution.
The legal rationale behind the two-year threshold is that short prison sentences often strip offenders of employment, housing, and social support networks while exposing them to hardened criminals – frequently increasing reoffending rates.
In light of Saturday’s attack, Germany is now re-examining its practice of suspending sentences.
Federal ministers and police unions have put forward several reform proposals, including creating a statutory exclusion for extremism and terrorism by amending section 56 of the German Criminal Code.
They suggest that this should also apply to the Youth Courts Act, to bar terrorism-related offenders from receiving suspended sentences, regardless of sentence length.
There are also growing demands to revise pre-trial detention rules to ensure terror suspects remain in custody pending prosecution appeals.
Further measures under discussion include introducing mandatory, standardised psychiatric and security-agency evaluations before any extremist can be granted a “favourable social prognosis”.
Pressure on the judiciary is mounting, as Ballout’s case is not isolated.
In 2020, Abdullah H.K., a 20-year-old Syrian national, carried out a knife attack in Dresden that killed one tourist and seriously injured another.
Like Ballout, he had served a juvenile sentence for supporting Islamic State and was classified as a high-risk threat, yet was released on probation under police surveillance just weeks before carrying out the fatal attack.
On Tuesday, Ballout’s father, Tawfik, distanced himself from his son’s views, saying his family was “not extremely religious”.
“We are Shiites. We do not support the Islamic State,” he told Spiegel magazine, alluding to IS being a Sunni terror group.
He said the pair had argued about his son wanting to grow a long beard, which his father feared was a sign of extremism.
“I didn’t allow him to wear a long beard... he was brainwashed.”
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