Love Parade Trial 2020 Archive · Final Proceedings

The criminal proceedings end without judgment

On 4 May 2020 the Love Parade criminal proceedings ended after 184 hearing days. The court discontinued the cases against the three remaining defendants without reaching a judgment.

The final hearing was unusual. Presiding Judge Mario Plein delivered an extended explanation drawing heavily upon the thousands of pages of expert work prepared by Professor Jürgen Gerlach.

The court had originally expected Gerlach to explain his analysis over approximately ten dedicated hearing days. The pandemic interruption meant that this could no longer be completed before the relevant limitation period.

Judge Plein therefore used the final sitting to explain the principal mechanisms which, in the court's assessment of the evidence accumulated during the trial, had led to the disaster.

Two critical failures in the movement system

A central part of the final explanation concerned two locations within the crowd system.

The first involved the controlled entrance points on either side of the tunnel. Their layout and available processing capacity allowed large accumulations to develop outside the controls.

During the critical period the police formed cordons inside the tunnel and on the ramp. Those interventions were undertaken on the assumption that further people would be prevented from entering.

That assumption failed. Communication between the different organisations was inadequate, entrance barriers were opened and substantial numbers of additional visitors entered the tunnel while the police measures were still affecting movement further ahead.

The result was a system in which attempts to manage one developing congestion problem interacted with continuing demand entering from behind.

Three competing movements met above the ramp

The second critical area was at the upper end of the ramp where visitors entered the festival site.

The court described three different groups competing for the available space: people entering the festival, people attempting to leave the festival and people standing or dancing close to the moving music trucks.

The available area was insufficient to accommodate those movements efficiently. Visitors arriving from the ramp therefore encountered people who were stationary or moving in the opposite direction.

Congestion at the top prevented the incoming flow from clearing. The resulting accumulation extended backwards down the ramp while additional people continued to approach from the tunnel.

From a crowd-management perspective, the importance of this explanation lies in the interaction between the complete crowd journey. The problem could not be understood only as an entrance failure or only as an internal-circulation failure; each part affected the other.

Many errors — but no individual criminal judgment

The court's explanation did not reduce the disaster to one decision or one organisation.

Planning and operational shortcomings involved the organiser, public-order authority, building authority, state police, Federal Police and fire service. Different decisions and assumptions interacted.

This broad pattern was central to the difficulty of the criminal proceedings. Evidence could identify serious systemic failures while still leaving the court unable to establish sufficiently serious individual criminal responsibility against the three remaining defendants.

Judge Plein stated that the court considered any criminal guilt of the remaining defendants to be low. The proceedings were therefore discontinued rather than brought to judgment.

The result was not a finding that nobody had made mistakes. Rather, the case ended without a criminal judgment allocating individual guilt to the remaining defendants.

No further evidence to be taken on 4 May

By the end of April it had become clear that the hearing scheduled for 4 May would not resume the normal evidential programme.

The court informed the parties that the sitting would either be used to announce the discontinuance decision or, if the court ultimately decided against termination, to discuss the factual and legal position.

No further witness or expert evidence would be taken that day. The three defendants and the prosecution had already agreed to the court's proposed termination.

This effectively meant that the planned detailed presentation of Professor Gerlach's expert work would no longer take place through the normal adversarial trial process.

Prosecutors accept that the case should end

The Duisburg public prosecutor's office agreed to the court's proposal to discontinue the remaining proceedings.

Prosecutors emphasised that the decision had not been easy given the 21 deaths, hundreds of injuries and the suffering experienced by those affected.

Nevertheless, when the circumstances of the remaining case, evidential position, pandemic and limitation period were considered together, the prosecution regarded discontinuance as legally acceptable.

The pandemic was therefore not the only reason the proceedings ended, but it removed the remaining time in which the court had expected to complete a substantial body of expert evidence.

Court proposes ending the Love Parade trial

The Duisburg Regional Court formally proposed discontinuing the criminal case because the COVID-19 pandemic had made it unclear when normal proceedings could safely resume.

At that stage 183 hearing days had been completed. The principal remaining evidential task was the presentation and examination of Professor Gerlach's extensive expert analysis.

The allegations of negligent homicide were approaching their absolute limitation period at the end of July. The court concluded that the remaining evidence could not realistically be completed within the available time.

Termination still required the consent of the prosecution and the three remaining defendants.

Proceedings suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic

The Love Parade trial was suspended indefinitely on safety grounds as the COVID-19 pandemic developed.

The court explained that some defendants, lay judges and supplementary lay judges belonged to groups at elevated risk from severe infection.

Approximately sixty people could normally be present for long periods within the windowless, air-conditioned courtroom. Participants also travelled to Düsseldorf from different parts of Germany.

The suspension created a serious procedural problem because the remaining allegations were approaching limitation in July.

Competing security companies

The final witness before the pandemic interruption was the head of a security company with extensive Love Parade experience.

His company had worked on Love Parade events since the 1990s and had developed substantial familiarity with the event format. In Duisburg, however, security responsibilities were split among several companies.

His company was awarded responsibility primarily for the main event site and supplied approximately 350 personnel. Other companies were responsible for approaches, entrances and the tunnel.

The court examined why a security organisation with long experience of previous Love Parades had not been given overall responsibility in 2010 and whether procurement or cost had influenced that decision.

The witness described the entrance arrangements as challenging and said his company had offered to undertake that work but had not ultimately received the contract.

He also explained that competing security companies did not routinely pool personnel within the same operational area. This evidence raised a significant crowd-management issue: the overall safety operation was divided between companies that were not necessarily structured to operate as one integrated team.

"For me personally, it was a shambles"

Two security personnel described the practical conditions on the event site and around the upper end of the ramp.

The first had originally been assigned to emergency exits in the eastern part of the event site. At approximately 16:00 he was redirected towards the entrance and exit area to deal with damaged fencing and visitors entering restricted embankments.

He described extremely high density and said colleagues had to push him through the crowd from behind. Personnel became separated and he improvised by directing other available security personnel to remove damaged barriers.

A second witness had arrived from Aachen as part of a small security team. He described receiving no meaningful briefing before being deployed near the ramp head.

His task was to prevent visitors entering the route used by the floats. Some colleagues later disappeared from their assigned positions and reportedly followed the music trucks instead. Attendance at the post was not properly checked and breaks were not effectively covered.

Importantly, the witness said he did not know that personnel in his area were supposed to act as "pushers" encouraging visitors to continue moving away from the ramp.

The evidence demonstrated a major difference between the written crowd-flow concept and the understanding of some of the personnel actually deployed to implement it.

The lookout and the "digital pencil"

A security worker who had been positioned on an elevated observation point above the ramp described watching the developing congestion from one of the best available viewpoints.

He had a radio and reported the formation of the police cordon. He said he was told that the situation would be resolved, but density continued to increase.

Visitors below began demanding that routes be opened. Objects were thrown towards the elevated position and wave-like movements became visible in the crowd.

The witness helped people who climbed onto structures to escape the pressure and later assisted after the emergency became apparent.

A second witness had worked as a student preparing and amending digital plans for Lopavent. He described himself essentially as a technical drawing operator who implemented changes requested by others.

Over approximately six weeks he had altered plans showing fencing, emergency exits, stages and other site elements. He could no longer remember the detailed discussions which had produced individual changes.

"We were almost desperate"

A police officer who had worked within police headquarters described a command structure in which he acted largely as a communication link between the site commander and the higher staff unit.

He emphasised that he had very limited authority to make independent operational decisions. Requests — including requests to stop additional people entering the tunnel — had to be passed through the hierarchy.

Nine years later his memory of many details was poor. Defence lawyers attempted to reconstruct the command system through plans, names and previous statements.

The evidence reinforced a conclusion already emerging from earlier hearings: both internal police communication and communication between police and the organiser were significantly impaired.

Personnel who might have been expected to maintain an overall understanding of the developing situation frequently possessed only part of the operational picture.

A hearing dominated by aerial video evidence

A planned witness examination ended quickly and a second witness was unable to attend because of ill health and continuing psychological consequences from the disaster.

The court therefore used the available time to introduce approximately an hour of aerial footage recorded from a Federal Police helicopter.

The recordings provided a wider perspective of the entire environment: railway lines, motorway, event site, surrounding roads and the tunnel and ramp.

They showed how visitors found both planned and informal routes towards and away from the event and how density increased around the access system.

Particularly important was the contrast between the severe congestion within the tunnel and ramp system and available space elsewhere on the event site.

The footage also showed large numbers of people entering once the separation controls were opened, demonstrating the speed at which upstream demand could be released towards an already constrained downstream system.

A witness who initially failed to attend

The hearing began unusually when the scheduled witness failed to appear. Judge Plein initially ordered that police locate and bring him to court.

It later emerged that his absence resulted from a misunderstanding and the witness arrived during the afternoon.

While the court waited, surveillance recordings of the disaster were shown. The judge stopped the footage when resuscitation scenes appeared because there was no evidential need to continue displaying them.

The witness had worked as a security guard and described moving and adjusting fencing before the event and assisting around the entrance system.

Video showed that at approximately 16:31 a section of fencing at the western entrance was opened, apparently to allow an ambulance to progress.

While that allowed the emergency vehicle to move, it also enabled additional visitors to enter the tunnel without normal control at a critical point in the developing incident.

Open, close, open again — conflicting entrance instructions

A security worker deployed at the western entrance described repeatedly changing instructions regarding whether visitors should be admitted.

He had not occupied a management position and said he simply followed instructions passed through supervisors.

The court attempted to identify a senior police officer alleged to have instructed security personnel to allow visitors through the controls. The witness was shown photographs but could not make a reliable identification.

Video recordings showed an ambulance caught among the crowd near the entrance. Once fencing was opened, the vehicle could progress — but the same opening also released visitors into the tunnel.

The evidence highlighted the difficulty of implementing a crowd control plan when instructions changed quickly and the people physically operating the barriers had little situational information about conditions further ahead.

Security evidence, police video and competing explanations

A security worker who had worked across the tunnel, western entrance and lower ramp initially attempted to refuse to give evidence before being reminded of the legal consequences.

He described himself as trusted by the Crowd Manager and able to move between locations depending upon where assistance was required.

Video showed him accompanying a police vehicle carrying medical personnel through the crowd. In his assessment, the vehicle had not itself generated the wave movements later visible within the crowd.

The witness became less willing to discuss the most traumatic part of the incident and the court did not force him to describe distressing detail unnecessarily.

Police video was then introduced showing road blocks on the approaches to the tunnel. Finally, defence lawyers made submissions attempting to attribute greater responsibility to the Crowd Manager and the absence of security personnel from particular ramp positions.

The competing explanations demonstrated how, even at this late stage of the trial, parties continued to disagree about the relative contribution of planning, security deployment and police intervention.

Fences and police barriers

A former security employee confirmed that he had physically opened fencing beside the western entrance controls.

He said an unidentified police officer had passed a tool through the fence and instructed him to remove the connection. Surveillance footage subsequently showed large numbers of visitors entering without normal control.

The second part of the hearing concentrated on police video recorded around barriers on Düsseldorfer Straße.

Earlier footage showed relatively calm conditions. As the afternoon progressed, increasing numbers of people accumulated, climbed barriers or searched for alternative routes.

The recordings showed how measures intended to regulate demand outside the tunnel interacted with congestion developing within the entrance system.

Later announcements told visitors that the event had been cancelled and instructed them to return towards the railway station. Dispersal continued for hours after the immediate disaster.

A memory record without a signature

A security-company manager was confronted with a written memory record apparently prepared after the disaster.

The document contained statements about the police, medical services and conditions within the tunnel, but the witness said he could no longer remember making those statements or agreeing with the wording.

He could not remember whether he had refused to sign the record because he disagreed with it.

The hearing nevertheless produced several important operational points. Police officers at the entrance appeared not to have had direct radio communication with officers positioned further along the route.

The witness had also met with Lopavent representatives before his formal police questioning and had been accompanied to that interview by a lawyer arranged through Lopavent.

Staffing records indicated that his company had scheduled only ten personnel for entrance controls where the concept apparently required sixteen, although additional personnel from another company may also have been present.

The evidence illustrated the operational value of accurate contemporaneous records. Almost ten years later, memory alone was frequently insufficient to reconstruct important decisions.

Evidence, video and an extraordinary lack of memory

The first witness completed evidence begun the previous day. The second was the security supervisor responsible for personnel operating the western entrance controls.

He immediately told the court that he remembered very little, explaining that he had deliberately tried to put the disaster behind him.

Judge Plein distinguished between emotionally processing an incident and being unable to recall almost any operational detail.

Deployment records suggested that ten personnel had been planned for the western entrance. Video then showed fences being opened and substantial numbers of visitors entering the tunnel during a critical period.

The witness was unable to provide useful explanations for much of what was visible on the recordings.

For event operations, the evidence again demonstrated the importance of clear command records, staffing records, post-incident statements and formal debriefing.

"It was all a long time ago"

A construction manager who had worked alongside the Crowd Manager described his role as a personal runner between the two tunnel entrances and the Crowd Manager's container near the bottom of the ramp.

His duties included checking security personnel and physically carrying information and instructions between locations.

When density on the ramp increased, the Crowd Manager instructed that both entrances should be closed. The witness was at the eastern entrance and said security personnel initially followed that instruction.

He then attempted to return through the crowd towards the Crowd Manager's position.

Other evidence and surveillance recordings showed that the entrance controls did not remain closed. They were subsequently opened and further visitors entered the tunnel.

This was particularly important because police officers further inside the system apparently believed that the entrances had been closed when they formed cordons intended to relieve congestion on the ramp.

The witness remembered assisting a collapsed woman and remaining involved in the response until late at night, but could no longer recall many details of communications or instructions.