Security sources told Reuters the suspect was released from juvenile detention only two months earlier.
They said he was known to domestic intelligence and was among the hundreds of people classed as potentially dangerous, a label that usually leads to scrutiny or monitoring.
The vehicle that crashed into a crowd near Berlin’s annual Christopher Street Day Pride parade evening is removed from the scene Sunday in Berlin, Germany.
Annegret Hilse, REUTERS
After mowing people down with the vehicle, the attacker injured some with a bladed weapon, thought to have been a machete, Dobrindt said.
The fire service said overnight that three of the injured were in life-threatening condition.
It was unclear whether the perpetrator acted alone, since police said more than one person may have gotten out of the van. The Berlin broadcaster RBB said an Iranian who was a passenger in the vehicle was arrested.
Reuters TV footage from the scene Sunday morning showed a white minivan crumpled into a tree. The mass-circulation newspaper Bild said it was a delivery vehicle that Abdul B. rented. German media reported that police searched the suspect’s Berlin apartment.
Thousands of people, some carrying the LGBT rainbow flag, attended a vigil at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. Some carried placards with slogans such as “Hatred kills,” while others cried and hugged one another. At the Tiergarten park, people lit candles and left flowers.
People gather Sunday at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, after a deadly incident in which a vehicle crashed into a crowd the prior evening.
Maryam Majd, REUTERS
Ahead of a memorial service at St Mary’s Church in Berlin, center-right Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged Germans to protect liberal values.
“We will defend the freedom, openness, and liberal spirit of our lives and our society with everything we can do,” he said.
The attack came at a sensitive time for conservative Merz’s unpopular coalition government, which is going through a bruising cabinet reshuffle as critics accuse it of being ineffective.