– Abdul was brainwashed, the Berlin terrorist’s own father said in an interview with Der Spiegel just hours before his son was shot dead by German police.

The father told the German news magazine that Abdul Ballout lived with his mother and two of his three sisters in the Berlin district of Tiergarten. The family is of Lebanese origin. Focus writes:

He attended school until the tenth grade. Abdul B. never held a permanent job afterwards, but worked “for example as a security guard or driver”. Instead, he spent his nights on his mobile phone or in front of the television, slept a great deal, and often did not get up until late in the afternoon.

The father himself was concerned that his son was attracted to ISIS:

“We are Shia Muslims. We do not support the Islamic State (IS),” the father of the 21-year-old told the magazine. Abdul B., however, is said to have “loved” the Sunnis. Some time ago, he is said to have asked his son what he thought of IS. Abdul B. reportedly assured him that he regarded the terrorist organisation as “bad”. According to the father, however, there was disagreement over his son’s appearance. “I did not allow him to grow a long beard,” the 64-year-old said in an interview with Spiegel.

Abdul, who was a known Islamist and had been assessed by the German security authorities as a potential terrorist, nevertheless had a motive for distancing himself from IS, as he had already been convicted of planning a terrorist offence.

The background was that Ballout had been arrested in Lebanon in 2025 because he had intended to travel to Syria to join IS. When he returned to Germany, he was immediately arrested by the German police.

On 12 May, the 21-year-old was sentenced to a youth sentence of one year and ten months after distancing himself from IS during the trial. Prior to the proceedings, he had been held in pre-trial detention. The German Federal Public Prosecutor appealed the judgment and sought a harsher sentence.

It was therefore while awaiting the appeal hearing that Abdul Ballout drove a van through a crowd of people in Berlin on Saturday evening. One person was killed and 29 injured in the terrorist attack.