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Love Parade trial: Charges dropped for 7 defendants

  • February 06, 2019

Presiding judge Mario Plein said Wednesday that “many persons” were collectively to blame for the 21 young people killed in a mass panic at Duisburg eight years ago but he argued that 14 months of proceedings had still not established individual guilt under German law.

Wednesday’s dropping of charges against accused — six Duisburg city officials and one event organizer — had been  expected since the court foreshadowed the move mid-January at special talks between defense lawyers, prosecutors and advocates for victims and relatives.

  • Love Parade: From humble beginnings, to major music festival, to tragic ending

    One DJ, three cars and just 150 party-goers

    Matthias Roeingh, better known by his stage name Dr. Motto, organized the first Love Parade in Berlin in 1989. Roeingh said he wanted the festival to be seen as a protest for peace. Some 150 party-goers, followed by three cars blaring techno music, danced down Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm boulevard under the banner “Peace, joy and pancakes.”

  • Love Parade: From humble beginnings, to major music festival, to tragic ending

    Europe catches the love bug

    It wasn’t long before the Love Parade grew into one of the largest music festivals in Europe. As the number of party-goers increased, so did the number of artists and event organizers who brought their own floats, or “love mobiles,” to the parade.

  • Love Parade: From humble beginnings, to major music festival, to tragic ending

    Partying in the heart of the German capital

    After almost half a million people flooded Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm for the Love Parade in 1996, it became clear that a larger venue was needed. The following year, the festival was moved to Berlin’s Straße des 17. Juni (17th of June Street), with the Victory Column, Brandenburg Gate and Tiergarten Park providing a historic backdrop to the frenzied techno rave.

  • Love Parade: From humble beginnings, to major music festival, to tragic ending

    More stress than love

    But as the festival attracted ever more revelers, it also attracted more trouble … and much, much more rubbish. Mountains of garbage in the Tiergarten became a common sight, to the disgust of many locals. However, because the Love Parade was still, in theory, a political festival, Berlin’s state government had to bear the costs, both for security and for the mass clean-ups.

  • Love Parade: From humble beginnings, to major music festival, to tragic ending

    Ravers protest festival commercialization

    For all its controversies, the main point of criticism directed at the festival was its increasing commercialization. Love Parade organizers made a pretty profit through licensing, advertising and merchandise sales. However, that also drove many techno heads to distance themselves from the Love Parade, with some even starting an annual counter festival, know as the “F*** Parade” (pictured above).

  • Love Parade: From humble beginnings, to major music festival, to tragic ending

    Out with the politics

    In 2001, Germany’s Constitutional Court revoked the Love Parade’s classification as a demonstration. The court found that the festival offered no clear political message, a requisite for any protest. Since organizers did not want to bear the security or clean-up costs, the 2004 and 2005 Love Parade festivals were cancelled.

  • Love Parade: From humble beginnings, to major music festival, to tragic ending

    ‘The Love is back!’

    Under the banner “The Love is back!” the Love Parade relaunched in 2006, bringing more than a million revelers to Berlin. But it would also be the last edition to take place in the German capital. That year, Rainer Schaller, an entrepreneur who runs a chain of fitness centers, took over the company in charge of organizing the festival. His plan was to bring the Love Parade to Germany’s Ruhr area.

  • Love Parade: From humble beginnings, to major music festival, to tragic ending

    A record attendance in the Ruhr metropolises

    According to the Love Parade organizers, more than a million flocked to the city of Essen for the first edition of the festival in western Germany in 2007, while some 1.6 million people partied in Dortmund the following year. Several people, however, have claimed that the numbers were massively inflated by organizers, likely for marketing purposes.

  • Love Parade: From humble beginnings, to major music festival, to tragic ending

    Bochum refuses Love Parade invitation

    High on the festival’s successes in Essen and Dortmund, organizers wanted to bring the Love Parade to the city of Bochum in 2009. However, city officials refused, citing security concerns. This ultimately forced the party to be cancelled in 2009, provoking outrage from seasoned ravers and parade-goers.

  • Love Parade: From humble beginnings, to major music festival, to tragic ending

    The horrific ending

    Organizers wanted to make up for the lost year by staging a massive festival in Duisburg in 2010. The festival coincided with the city’s selection as a European Capital of Culture and attracted over a million visitors. But the party ended in tragedy. Panic broke out as crowds converged in a tunnel leading to the festival grounds, resulting in the deaths of 21 people, and injuring a further 650.

  • Love Parade: From humble beginnings, to major music festival, to tragic ending

    Never again

    The very same day as the deadly stampede, Love Parade organizers announced that there would be no further festivals. Every year on July 24, Germany comes together to commemorate the victims of the festival tragedy.

  • Love Parade: From humble beginnings, to major music festival, to tragic ending

    Love Parade disaster goes to trial

    In December 2017, more than seven years after the tragic Love Parade incident, prosecutors launched criminal proceedings against six Duisburg city employees and four festival organizers. The trial is set to be one of Germany’s largest ever court cases, with 70 lawyers involved — 32 representing defendants and 38 representing 65 joint plaintiffs, mainly relatives of the young people killed.


Three choose to remain on trial

Three Love Parade organizers who worked for the Berlin-based firm Lopavent elected Wednesday to remain on trial – seeking to clear their names – after rejecting fines of 10,000 euros ($11,400) offered by prosecutors.

Read more: survivors describe ordeal

Jürgen Widera, a Duisburg Protestant pastor who chairs a trust for victims, said many parents wanted the judiciary to continue examining “further mosaic stones” so as to established the causes of the crush that also left 652 injured, some traumatized.

‘Many persons’ collectively culpable

“Naturally, we will now intensively pursue our obligation to investigate,” said Justice Plein while denying that the judiciary had overlooked culprits during the trial – held for space reasons in a Düsseldorf conference center – by Duisburg’s Regional Court since December 2017, involving so far 59 witnesses and 8 experts.

“Many persons are to blame,” Plein said, adding that the court already saw mistakes in planning the event and a collective failure on the festival day, 24 July 2010. Trial termination for the seven was, however, “right, said Plein, saying their individual guilt was minimal or at most moderate.

Identifying culprits ‘glass-clear,’  says father

Klaus-Peter Mogendorf, who lost his son, Eike, in the mass tragedy, demanded Wednesday that “this trial not be terminated” and urged the court at its Wednesday session to continue its probe, saying that in 2010 it was “glass-clear” that there had been culprits.

In July 2010, techno music fans were funneled through a single egress – a large disused two-lane vehicle tunnel – onto former rail yards at Duisburg, a Rhine river city in western Germany.

The 62-year-old civil engineer accused the court Wednesday of citing from an expert report it commissioned only selectively and not hearing important witnesses.

Organizers had known that the rail yard access should be been widened via earthworks and that a required public address system to inform pedestrians had been omitted, said Mogendorf.

Mayor understands ‘disappointment’

Duisburg’s Social Democrat (SPD) mayor Sören Link, who was elected after the disaster said he understood the disappointment of survivors and relatives of those killed after 101 days of trial proceedings.

Read more: Former mayor denies blame

“The trial days up to now have shown how difficult the search for causal, individual guilt is – and this is what [German] criminal law is about,” said Link.

Prosecutors cite expiry deadline

Prosecutors had argued that a statute of limitation – effective tens years after the disaster – would force a trial closure by 28 July 2010.

Justice Plein told Mogendorf Wednesday that the statute of limitation “does not matter,”  adding that the court continued to work on the basis of establishing sufficient suspicion.

Cessation ‘understandable’

Defense lawyer Gerd-Ulrich Kapteina said for his client the trial cessation was “absolutely understandable.”

The charges against my client have not been established. The planning errors did not lie with the [public] site supervision,” said Kapteina.

ipj/aw (dpa, AFP, epd)

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