On the evening of 25 July, a white van ploughed into a crowd along a pedestrian pathway near Berlin's main Pride parade, killing one woman and injuring at least 29 others. As police launched a manhunt for the suspect, later identified as 21-year-old Abdul B., the information vacuum was quickly filled with false claims and misleading social media posts.
The suspect was shot dead the following evening in a police operation. Officials stated they saw no indication of an ongoing threat once he was neutralised, despite speculation that he may have acted with accomplices.
False bomb threat and arrest claims
Less than an hour after the attack, anonymous posts on X claimed that the main Pride event had been evacuated due to an “alleged bomb threat.” Organisers had initially cancelled the event around 10:00 pm, asking people to leave because of a “difficult situation,” but there was no official confirmation of any bomb threat. Additional reports of shots fired in Tiergarten park also proved false. Authorities later confirmed that the suspect had used the vehicle to ram into the crowd, then got out and attacked passersby with a bladed weapon.
Shortly afterwards, a video emerged showing a man in a white shirt being apprehended by police on the ground. The clip was widely shared, often bearing the logo of the right-wing newspaper Junge Freiheit, with users claiming it showed the arrest of the attacker. Euronews’ fact-checking team, The Cube, found that the same video was also circulated on pro-Russian Telegram groups and the German-language Pravda website, part of an ecosystem of clone websites linked by researchers to pro-Kremlin influence operations. However, police stated that no suspect had been arrested at that stage, making the claim attached to the footage misleading.
Innocent man falsely identified
As the manhunt continued, social media users shared videos of TikTok content creator Abdul Malik, wrongly alleging that he was the attacker. The false identification was accompanied by posts claiming that Malik had carried out the attack after being allowed to return to Germany following his deportation. Other posts used Malik's videos to criticise Germany's immigration and deportation policies, even though the attacker's identity had not been confirmed at that time.
Malik, who shares a similar first name with the suspect, denied involvement in a social media video, saying he was “speechless” that users had connected him to the case. He added that the false identification put himself and his family members at risk. This is not the first time innocent individuals have been wrongly accused online after a violent attack; similar misidentifications occurred after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
The spread of misinformation in the wake of the Berlin Pride attack underscores the challenges authorities face in maintaining public trust during fast-moving investigations. For more on the broader security implications, see our analysis of how the Berlin Pride attack exposes the EU's lack of a unified terror watchlist.
As European societies grapple with the threat of lone-actor attacks, the incident also reignites debates about political Islam and open society, as discussed in our piece on how political Islam poses a direct threat to open society. Meanwhile, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has vowed to defend freedom after what he called an Islamist terror attack, a stance we covered in our report on Merz's response.
