BERLIN, (MILLAT/APP/AFP) – Two years to the day
after the deadly Germanwings crash in the French Alps, the father of co-pilot Andreas Lubitz spoke out publicly Friday to dispute that his son deliberately downed the plane.
Both the message and the timing of the first public appearance by a
member of Lubitz’s close family since the 2015 disaster that claimed 150 lives were criticised by victims’ families, who held their own sombre events to mark the tragedy.
German prosecutors in January closed their investigation after
concluding that Lubitz, 27, was suicidal and bore sole responsibility for the catastrophe, following similar conclusions from a French probe.
The co-pilot’s father, 63-year-old Guenter Lubitz, called a press
conference in Berlin to challenge those findings alongside a journalist he
hired, Tim van Beveren, whom he called “an internationally recognised aerospace expert”.
Lubitz senior argued that the image of the suicidal loner or cold-blooded
killer did not correspond with the son he knew, and called for a new
investigation into the cause of the crash.
“We have to live with the fact that we not only lost our son, but also
that it was concluded two days after the fact that he was a depressed mass
murderer,” Lubitz, who bears a striking physical resemblance to his son, told the packed hotel conference room.
“I would like to stress that we experienced our son in the six years
before the crash as someone who said yes to life. Our son was not depressed at the time of the crash.”
Mourners in the western German town of Haltern am See, which lost 16
students and two teachers who were returning from an exchange programme in
Spain, expressed outrage as the school held a commemorative ceremony.
Its principal, Ulrich Wessel, told DPA news agency the press conference
had been a “provocation” and “an affront to the parents” of the dead schoolchildren and said Lubitz senior appeared to have “lost touch with reality”.