Love Parade Trial 2018 Archive · June–December

Is this the final stretch?

The court completed its final hearing before the Christmas recess. The questioning of the previous day's witness was concluded without major new evidence.

Presiding judge Mario Plein commented favourably on the progress of the proceedings and the fact that the extensive timetable had largely been maintained. Given the scale of the case and the number of legal representatives involved, this had not been assumed possible when the trial began.

Attention was increasingly moving towards the proposed legal discussion in January 2019. Only a small number of witnesses remained before the court and parties were due to consider the state of the evidence and whether the proceedings should continue towards judgment.

"We should make the best of it"

A security supervisor who had been responsible for one of the tunnel entrances described the condition of the infrastructure and his concerns about the barriers provided for the operation.

He had substantial experience of major events and said he recognised on the morning of the Love Parade that some of the temporary fencing was inadequate for controlling large crowds. Those concerns were reported to the Crowd Manager.

Later, as pressure increased on the ramp, he was instructed by the Crowd Manager to close the entrances. He subsequently opened the controls fully, stating that a senior police officer had instructed him to do so.

The identity of the alleged officer remained unclear. Video recordings did not conclusively establish who issued the instruction.

The witness became emotional when discussing the consequences and described carrying a sense of moral responsibility despite having acted within an operation in which authority and communication had become confused.

Security concepts, building regulation and surveillance footage

A senior construction official was questioned about the extent to which the building authority had been required to assess the organiser's security concept.

His evidence was that a security concept was not itself a construction submission in the usual sense. This raised a difficult question about whether the building authority had merely been required to establish that a concept existed or had also been required to test whether that concept was operationally credible.

The court also viewed surveillance footage showing the tunnel over several hours. Earlier recordings showed relaxed movement with substantial available space. By later afternoon the pattern had changed dramatically.

Once the entrance controls reopened, large numbers of people moved towards the ramp. The recording subsequently showed people attempting to climb fencing and escape from the increasingly dense crowd.

Emergency planning, casualty assumptions and special building rules

Evidence was heard from officials involved in fire-protection and emergency planning. One witness had acted as a specialist adviser within the Interior Ministry crisis structure.

Preparatory planning had contemplated very large casualty numbers. Resources were considered against scenarios involving thousands of minor casualties and hundreds of people requiring hospital treatment.

The tunnel and ramp had been recognised as potentially critical, but witnesses described assumptions that crowd behaviour and the movement of people towards individual DJs and floats would draw visitors away from the access point.

Evidence also concerned the application of special building regulations and whether reduced escape-route dimensions could be accepted. A ministry witness said he had expressed reservations about applying those rules to the unusual Love Parade site.

Video evidence was again used to compare the theoretical planning with the conditions that actually developed.

One year of proceedings: "We will say what caused the disaster"

One year after the trial began, more than eighty hearing days had taken place and more than fifty witnesses had been heard.

Survivors, forensic specialists, city officials, fire-service personnel and numerous police officers had given evidence. Thousands of pages of documents and extensive video material had also been examined.

Presiding judge Mario Plein emphasised that the proceedings were intended not only to determine possible individual criminal responsibility but also to establish how the disaster occurred.

The expert work of Professor Jürgen Gerlach had concluded that the disaster could have been prevented and identified both planning deficiencies and operational factors.

At the same time, the legal discussion scheduled for January created uncertainty over whether the case would proceed to a judgment.

The remaining hope of establishing the facts

FAZ examined whether the proceedings were likely to end without a formal judgment despite the enormous quantity of evidence collected.

The expert report had identified serious shortcomings in the planning and suitability of the site and had also concluded that intervention on the day might still have prevented the disaster.

The legal difficulty remained establishing the individual causal responsibility of the ten defendants. The evidence increasingly demonstrated that a much wider range of people and organisations had influenced the event.

For victims and relatives, the detailed reconstruction of events therefore remained important even if the proceedings ultimately failed to produce a conviction or acquittal.

Court confirms January legal discussion

The Duisburg Regional Court confirmed that a non-public legal discussion was expected to take place on 16 January 2019.

Judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers and lawyers representing co-plaintiffs would be able to discuss the evidence accumulated so far and the legal assessment of the case.

The meeting did not automatically mean that the trial would be discontinued. However, the possibility that proceedings might end without judgment was expressly within the range of outcomes.

Up to seventy-five lawyers could potentially participate in the discussion, reflecting the exceptional scale of the case.

Witnesses make extensive use of pastoral and psychological support

Support services operating alongside the trial reported that witnesses were using pastoral and psychological assistance to a greater extent than initially anticipated.

The affected group was wider than survivors and bereaved relatives. Police officers, firefighters and others who had been involved in the event were also required to revisit traumatic memories while giving evidence.

Witnesses sometimes entered the hearing apparently composed but became increasingly distressed as questioning progressed or as photographs and video challenged their recollection of events.

A pastor or psychologist was therefore present during hearing days, with additional support available on call.

In the centre of the disaster

The police officer who commanded hundreds of officers in the ramp and tunnel sector described the operation from one of the closest command positions to the developing disaster.

He said concerns had existed beforehand about the bottleneck created by the tunnel and ramp. Police vehicles had even been identified as possible tools for creating barriers if required.

During the event, the officer became involved in the decision to form police cordons in an effort to create temporary buffer space. Communication difficulties, limited information and rapidly increasing pressure meant that the intervention did not work as intended.

Video shown in court demonstrated officers removing barriers during the critical period, allowing further visitors to enter the already congested system.

The witness became visibly emotional when describing the first reports that people had died. Years later he continued to ask himself what might have been done differently.

Why were police cordons formed?

A police officer directly involved in the cordons explained the operational thinking behind them. His evidence helped clarify why officers had attempted to stop movement in an area where the overriding planning principle had been that the tunnel must not become stationary.

The officer described police cordons as a familiar method of reducing pressure and creating a temporary buffer. The intention was that the cordon would remain only briefly while congestion further up the ramp was cleared.

For the plan to work, the organiser's personnel at the upper end of the ramp needed to draw visitors onward while the entrance controls prevented additional people entering the tunnel.

Neither element worked as expected. The accumulation at the top remained and visitors continued to enter through the external control points.

The evidence therefore provided a more complex explanation than simply describing the cordon as an arbitrary police mistake. It showed an intervention undertaken within a failing wider system.

The Crowd Manager gives evidence

The event's Crowd Manager became one of the most significant operational witnesses of the later 2018 hearings.

He said he had regarded the combined entrance and exit system as critical during planning and had proposed different arrangements. He also raised concerns about fencing and the need to prevent excessive accumulation in the tunnel and ramp.

From his control position he monitored the flow of visitors and attempted to coordinate security personnel. However, he described major communication weaknesses between himself and police commanders.

He had no direct police radio connection and said important police interventions, including the formation of cordons, were undertaken without agreement with him.

As congestion worsened he recommended completely closing the tunnel entrances. He described calling for the operation to be stopped but said his assessment was rejected.

The evidence also exposed a wider issue of fragmented responsibility. The Crowd Manager repeatedly distinguished between matters inside his formal area of responsibility and events occurring outside it, while police witnesses had made similar distinctions in the opposite direction.

Could a stronger fire-service objection have changed the outcome?

Evidence returned to the role of fire-safety specialists and the extent to which concerns expressed during planning should have resulted in a formal objection.

The court examined whether the fire service had adequately exercised its professional responsibilities or whether a stronger veto might have prevented the event proceeding under the approved configuration.

A further police witness then described his involvement in operational preparation. As with a number of earlier witnesses, many details could no longer be recalled with certainty eight years after the event.

Federal Police command evidence

A Federal Police officer responsible for security at Duisburg Central Station described preparations for managing the very high passenger numbers expected to arrive by rail.

His command function was exercised remotely from Sankt Augustin. He said he knew that movement had slowed or stopped at various times but had not understood the severity of the situation near the event site until reports of fatalities began arriving.

His evidence echoed a recurring feature of earlier police testimony: senior command structures did not appear to have a complete operational picture of what was happening around the tunnel and ramp.

The hearing on 17 October was shortened when a member of the court required emergency medical treatment. Proceedings resumed the following day.

Fire-protection planning and the boundary of responsibility

A specialist who had developed fire-protection documentation for the event described his role as primarily relating to the main festival area rather than the tunnel and ramp.

The court nevertheless examined how the specialist had physically accessed the site during inspections and what had been discussed at preparatory meetings.

The witness recalled a difficult meeting shortly before the event during which concerns about the access system arose. Those questions were said to belong to another working group.

The evidence again illustrated how risks could fall between professional disciplines when each participant treated a narrow part of the overall event as being outside their own formal remit.

Victims' lawyers fear the proceedings could end without judgment

Lawyers representing co-plaintiffs became increasingly concerned after the court announced its intention to hold a legal discussion in early 2019.

Twelve lawyers wrote to North Rhine-Westphalia Justice Minister Peter Biesenbach asking him to prevent prosecutors agreeing to a discontinuance of proceedings.

The request was unusual because it asked the political executive to intervene in prosecutorial decision-making. Biesenbach declined to do so, emphasising the independence of the judicial and prosecutorial process.

Judge Plein responded strongly to suggestions that the court intended to abandon the search for the truth. He said the court remained committed to explaining why people had died and been injured.

Former police commander Kuno Simon gives evidence

Retired senior police commander Kuno Simon described his involvement in the preparation and operation of the Love Parade.

He said he had been uncomfortable with the choice of location and believed Duisburg lacked an obviously suitable site for an event of the proposed scale.

Despite those concerns, Simon said no sufficiently specific hazard scenario had been established that would have justified police preventing the event from taking place.

His evidence distinguished between police responsibility outside the entrance-control points and the organiser's responsibility for the area beyond them.

Simon described serious communication problems on the day and acknowledged that important information about police cordons did not reach senior command in time.

Lawyers warn that the trial may be discontinued

Twelve lawyers representing victims wrote to Justice Minister Peter Biesenbach expressing concern that the case might end in early 2019 without a judgment.

Their concern followed the announcement of a future legal discussion at which the court and parties would review the state of the evidence and discuss how the case should proceed.

Some co-plaintiffs feared that an agreement between the court, prosecution and defence could result in proceedings being closed, potentially subject to financial conditions.

Other lawyers representing victims were more cautious about seeking political intervention, arguing that the justice minister should not interfere with an ongoing criminal process.

Police witnesses describe information failures

Several police witnesses described major gaps in information reaching senior command during the critical period.

One officer who had participated in planning said he did not learn about the police cordons until hours after the disaster. Judge Plein repeatedly challenged witnesses with contemporary radio messages and written records that appeared difficult to reconcile with their recollections.

Another officer described the "shock" within command structures when the first reports of fatalities arrived.

The evidence suggested a hierarchical system that was slow to adapt as conditions changed. Information moved through several command levels while the crowd situation on the ramp could change within minutes.

Expert report places greater emphasis on the police operation

Professor Jürgen Gerlach's extensive expert work became a major development in the proceedings.

The analysis concluded that a police cordon formed on the ramp may have contributed to the development of the fatal crowd conditions. When the cordon was eventually released, opposing flows met in a highly constrained area.

Gerlach did not identify the police action as the sole cause. His analysis continued to identify major planning weaknesses, particularly the unsuitability of the access system for the anticipated visitor numbers.

The significance was that the disaster was increasingly being understood as the result of interacting failures rather than a single planning error.

This was legally important because no police officer was among the defendants and potential prosecution of additional officers was affected by limitation periods.

Senior police command examined over several hearing days

A senior officer who had worked in the police command staff was questioned over several days — more time than had been allocated to any earlier witness.

The court examined planning meetings, staffing, shift changes, communication systems and the information available to senior commanders as congestion developed.

The witness acknowledged limited experience of events of this scale and described communication problems involving radio, mobile phones and hierarchical reporting structures.

A controversial shift change began during a period when crowd demand was expected to be particularly high. Vehicles moved through the tunnel while incoming personnel had to establish situational awareness.

Senior officials were also occupied with a visit by the then Interior Minister. The witness denied that the visit had interrupted command, but the hearing explored whether command personnel had been sufficiently accessible during the critical period.

Important information about police cordons apparently failed to reach senior command until after fatalities had already occurred.

The struggle for answers continues

After almost nine months of hearings, frustration was becoming evident among bereaved relatives and survivors.

Many witnesses from political, administrative and professional backgrounds repeatedly stated that they could no longer remember important meetings, emails or decisions.

For families who had waited eight years for the criminal proceedings, these memory gaps were particularly difficult.

At the same time, the court was progressing efficiently through the witness programme. The city and fire-service evidence was largely complete and the first major police witnesses were about to appear.

Parties were also studying another substantial section of Professor Gerlach's expert analysis concerning crowd conditions and events on the day.

Responsibility repeatedly attributed elsewhere

At approximately the halfway point in the planned hearing programme, contemporary analysis identified a repeated pattern: witnesses tended to define responsibility narrowly and place critical decisions outside their own professional remit.

The fire chief described his responsibilities primarily in relation to fire protection. Former Lord Mayor Sauerland had emphasised reliance on specialists. Rainer Schaller had described detailed planning as delegated to employees.

The cumulative effect raised an important question for the proceedings: if major failures were evident throughout the planning process, where did responsibility for the connected system actually sit?

Former city coordinator Wolfgang Rabe gives evidence

Wolfgang Rabe had acted as a central coordinating figure within the Duisburg administration and had been repeatedly mentioned by earlier witnesses.

He said he had initially been sceptical about the Love Parade but became more confident after meeting representatives of Lopavent. Once satisfied that the event could be delivered, he regarded his role as helping the administration find solutions rather than obstructing the project.

Rabe confirmed that the event was politically desired, although he rejected the suggestion that improper direct pressure had been applied to him.

Evidence examined the transfer of responsibility from the public order department to building control, the appointment of Michael Schreckenberg and the way objections from individual officials were managed.

Rabe also described the crisis-management response after the first fatality was reported, including liaison with regional and state government.

Michael Schreckenberg questioned over the scope of his advice

Professor Michael Schreckenberg, known for research into traffic and crowd movement, gave evidence about the advice he had provided to the City of Duisburg.

He had received a fee of approximately €20,000 but described his role as limited. He said he had been asked to comment upon particular issues rather than provide a comprehensive safety assessment.

Schreckenberg said he had warned about aspects of the access system but had not been commissioned to assess the entire event safety concept.

He also stated that Lopavent had chosen to undertake its own planning and had not involved him directly.

Questions arose because documents suggested that other participants may have understood his commission to be broader. Judge Plein repeatedly examined whether Schreckenberg's interpretation of his own role matched the expectations of the city and police.

Schreckenberg later expressed regret that he had not warned more strongly about the developing risks.

Eight years after the Love Parade disaster

The eighth anniversary of the disaster fell while the criminal trial was still progressing.

By this point the court had heard extensive evidence from survivors, senior political figures, city employees and specialists, but important questions concerning police operations and overall causation remained unresolved.

The anniversary provided an opportunity to consider the contrast between the passage of time and the continuing legal process. Families and survivors had waited more than seven years for the trial to begin and were now following a case expected to continue well into 2019.

Former public-order chief describes early objections

Hans-Peter Bölling, the former head of Duisburg's public-order office, described concerns dating back several years before the event.

He said the department had examined possible routes and locations and concluded that the Love Parade should not be held on public roads and spaces within Duisburg.

When the former freight-yard site later emerged as the proposed venue, Bölling said he again regarded the location as unsuitable. He was particularly concerned about the limited access system and the consequences if the event site became full.

Responsibility for approving the private enclosed venue later passed from the public-order department to building control. Bölling nevertheless continued raising concerns through letters, notes and internal discussions.

He also described growing political and media pressure following cancellation of the 2009 Love Parade in Bochum and the desire for Duisburg to host the event during the RUHR.2010 Capital of Culture year.

Emails, meeting records and the question of who was responsible

Much of the June evidence involved detailed examination of emails, meeting minutes and internal administrative documents.

Judge Plein repeatedly attempted to establish whether objections raised during planning had been resolved through technical evidence or had simply been overtaken by decisions from senior levels of the organisations involved.

Evidence also addressed the legal concept of agreement between the organiser and relevant public authorities in relation to an event safety concept.

Some witnesses said they had not fully understood the legal significance of these requirements at the time, further illustrating uncertainty over responsibility for assessing the combined safety arrangements.

Former Lopavent lawyer describes pressure during negotiations

A former lawyer for Lopavent returned to the witness stand and gave further evidence about negotiations between the organiser and the City of Duisburg.

He acknowledged that pressure had been applied during legal discussions and said contentious negotiations naturally involved attempts to move the other party towards an acceptable position.

Emails examined by the court referred to finding "creative" approaches to issues including escape-route requirements. Discussion also concerned the possibility of obtaining an expert assessment that would be more favourable to the organiser's position.

The evidence contributed to the court's examination of whether technical safety requirements had been treated as fixed constraints or as obstacles to be negotiated around in order for the event to proceed.

The witness was not a defendant and had ceased working for Lopavent after the disaster.