Published
Mon, Apr 24, 2017, 14:45
- Ten people will be tried for involuntary manslaughter, seven years after the stampede that killed 21 people in Duisburg.
A German court will move forward with the trial over the deaths at Love Parade in 2010.
21 people died and more than 500 were injured in July 2010 following a crush caused by thousands of people trying to get into the festival through a narrow tunnel. A court initially laid out criminal charges in 2014—against four staff of Lopavent, the company that organized the festival, and six Duisburg city officials—but last year, they ruled not to hear the case due to lack of evidence.
Now a higher court in Düsseldorf has overruled that decision, saying there is "sufficient probability" of convictions, the Associated Press reports. They reversed a number of the original findings, including the decision to dismiss a report by British crowd safety expert Keith Still, which was initially thrown out due to errors. "The decision provides victims and their relatives with the certainty that a legal review of the disaster will soon come to a public trial," prosecutors said in a statement today. It will now fall to the Duisborg court to set dates for the criminal trial.