Berlin Pride attacker pledged allegiance to Islamic State in video

The video was found on the phone of Abdul Rahman Ballout, 21, who was shot by police

The man blamed for the deadly attack near Berlin's Pride parade at the weekend pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in a video, German media reported Tuesday.

The video was found on the phone of Abdul Rahman Ballout, 21, and was recorded on Saturday, the day of the attack, the mass-circulation Bild daily cited unnamed security sources as saying.

AFP has approached prosecutors for confirmation.

Bild reported that Ballout's phone was found inside the rented van the attacker ploughed into a crowd just hundreds of metres from the parade before he crashed it into a tree in the Tiergarten park.

Alongside the phone was a sheath for the machete he is believed to have used to attack more people after leaving the vehicle.

A 65-year-old Polish woman was killed in the attack and 29 people were injured.

Ballout was shot dead on Sunday by police, who said he ran at them with a bladed weapon.

Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, was well-known to the criminal justice system and last year travelled to Lebanon in a failed attempt to fight for IS.

A Lebanese judicial source told AFP that Ballout was sentenced to three months in jail there for belonging to IS.

He was detained on his return to Germany and in May was convicted by a juvenile court of "planning a serious act of subversive violence" and given a suspended jail sentence of one year and 10 months.

 

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