Event organisers and city workers in Germany accused of manslaughter and bodily harm all deny wrongdoing
German prosecutors have charged 10 people with charges including involuntary manslaughter and bodily harm over a stampede at a electronic dance music festival in 2010 which resulted in 21 deaths.
Six private event organisers and four city workers face five years in jail if convicted over the deaths and injuries at the annual Love Parade festival.
Mass panic broke out at the event in Duisburg, in the west of the country, because the only entrance gate was too small for the huge crowd.
The 10 charged have denied wrongdoing, the city prosecutor Horst Bien told journalists.
"Something happened on July 24, 2010, that should never have happened," Bien said. "We weren't looking to see who was morally or politically responsible but instead focused only on who was criminally liable."
Eight foreigners – from Spain, Bosnia, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy and China – were among those killed when young people pushed through an underpass into the festival grounds at a former freight rail yard.
State prosecutors investigated why an event set up for 250,000 people ended up with nearly 500,000 attending.
Bien said the access was clearly too narrow to cope with the number of people who were expected. He argued that the event employees should have recognised that, and that the city employees shouldn't have given the event a permit to go ahead.
"Mistakes in planning were the main reason for the disaster," Bien said.
Accustomed to a high degree of efficiency and organisation at such events, Germans were dumbfounded by the chaos and by media reports that officials and organisers did not heed warnings that there would be problems with such a massive crowd. The Duisburg state court now has to decide whether to send the case to trial. It wasn't immediately clear when that might happen.
by via Music: Electronic music | theguardian.com
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