A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
To Germany now, where a vehicle rammed into a crowd near Berlin's annual Pride parade over the weekend. One person died and at least 29 others were injured. On Sunday, police shot and killed the suspect, Abdul Ballout, after a manhunt lasting nearly a full day. Here's Esme Nicholson.
ESME NICHOLSON, BYLINE: This is the moment Berlin Pride organizers urged hundreds of thousands of people marching and dancing towards the Brandenburg Gate to leave the parade calmly and go home.
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UNIDENTIFIED ORGANIZER: (Speaking German).
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NICHOLSON: They were following police instructions after a white van drove into a crowd close to the procession route. Prosecutors are treating the incident as an act of Islamist terrorism. Calling it abhorrent, Chancellor Friedrich Merz says terrorists have no place in German society.
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CHANCELLOR FRIEDRICH MERZ: (Through interpreter) We will not be intimidated. These acts have only one purpose, and that is to take away the most important thing we have - our openness and our freedom.
NICHOLSON: Twenty-one-year-old Abdul Ballout fled the scene, brandishing what witnesses say was a machete. Police shot and killed him in a community garden on the outskirts of Berlin on Sunday evening. Prosecutors say that last year, Ballout, a German national with Lebanese heritage, attempted to join ISIS on a trip to Lebanon. He was arrested on his return to Berlin and convicted of preparing a serious act of violence, but handed down a suspended sentence, which prosecutors were appealing.
Pride organizer Thomas Hoffmann says increasing hostility is the reason why a record 700,000 people showed up to Pride this year.
THOMAS HOFFMANN: (Through interpreter) We've become complacent. For decades, things have been getting better regarding our rights, our safety and our visibility, but that's changing and we need to take a stand.
NICHOLSON: But he says the threats are also coming thick and fast from the far right, with an increasing number of anti-Pride protests staged by neo-Nazis. Berlin mayor, Kai Wegner, says this was an attack on all Berliners.
KAI WEGNER: (Through interpreter) We will not let anyone destroy our way of life.
NICHOLSON: But for many taking part in Pride this weekend, life has been destroyed and the city has changed. For NPR News, I'm Esme Nicholson in Munich.
(SOUNDBITE OF SEAM'S "ALOHA SPIRIT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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