The Berlin Police report yet another attack on the Rainbow Bank in Tiergarten, which had only been erected in early August in response to the Islamist terrorist attack at the CSD Berlin. Officers from the local precinct determined early Friday that one or more unknown individuals had vandalized the memorial bench.
The police noted around 4:20 a.m. near Ahornsteig in the Große Tiergarten a strong odor of paint and found that the bench had been spray-painted with black paint over a large area. The officers cleaned the bench with their own equipment.
The investigations into the suspected joint property damage were taken over by the State Protection unit of the State Criminal Police Office. This is standard practice in cases involving suspected hate crime.
Bank has already suffered damage or destruction multiple times
Police had already reported on September 1 that the Rainbow Bank had been destroyed by “massive force.” At that time, all of the colorful wooden slats were ripped out and the backrest was broken away from the rest of the frame (TheColu.mn reported). Two weeks later it was reinstalled.
But the destruction spree continued: A week ago the police found that one of the wooden slats of the rainbow bank had been dismantled, two other slats also showed damage (TheColu.mn reported). After a swift repair, four days later at night more slats were removed from the bank (TheColu.mn reported). With Friday’s act, the Rainbow Bank had thus become the target of an attack four times in one month — three of them in the last seven days alone.
The Rainbow Bank commemorates the terror attack on July 25 at Berlin’s CSD. Back then, the 21-year-old Islamist attacker Abdul Ballout drove a car into a crowd and crashed into a maple tree. A newly planted tree there is also part of the memorial (TheColu.mn reported). That tree was also deliberately damaged in early September (TheColu.mn reported).
