A tree planted at the site of a fatal attack on this year’s Berlin Pride march has been destroyed, just days after a commemorative rainbow bench there was vandalised, German police said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The maple, planted in August in Berlin’s Tiergarten park, was uprooted on the eve of a key election in the neighbouring state of Saxony-Anhalt in which the far-right, anti-LGBTQ AfD party is expected to secure an easy majority.<\/p>\n
The tree and bench constituted a place of remembrance for victims of a suspected jihadist attack on the Pride march in July that killed a 65-year-old Polish woman and wounded around 30 people.<\/p>\n
“The commemorative tree was… pulled up by the roots,” a police spokeswoman told AFP, confirming a report by public radio RBB.<\/p>\n
Last week, police said wooden slats from the adjacent rainbow bench had been torn off with “considerable physical violence”.<\/p>\n
They noted that other benches nearby had been left intact.<\/p>\n
“I say to all the queer people in this city: you are not alone,” Werner Graf, head of the Green group in the Berlin parliament, said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“We will replant this tree — as often as necessary.”<\/p>\n
Mitte district council has pledged to replace the vandalised bench, which it said “stands for our freedom and for solidarity with the queer community”.<\/p>\n
“Whoever destroyed it wants to make a statement against these values. Our basic values are not up for debate,” Mitte district mayor Stefanie Remlinger said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Revellers at the July Pride march — one of Europe’s largest — were targeted in a vehicle ramming and machete attack, which police suspect was carried out by a 21-year-old German man who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n
Police shot the suspect dead the following day after he had gone on the run.<\/p>\n
July’s attack was one of several which have shaken Germany in recent years.<\/p>\n
The deadliest was a car ramming that killed six people and injured more than 300 at a Christmas market in 2024 in Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt.<\/p>\n
The convicted perpetrator was a Saudi national who supported far-right views and radical conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n
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