Flood night videos put RLP Interior Minister Lewentz in trouble – SWR Aktuell

Interior Minister Lewentz’s defense strategy is collapsing like a house of cards. In the state parliament’s investigative committee on the flood disaster, which is intended, among other things, to clarify possible political omissions, Lewentz had always stated that there was no reliable picture of the situation on the flood night. Because of this unclear situation, the Rhineland-Palatinate state government saw no basis for taking over the command of operations or convening a crisis team on the evening of the flood.

According to everything that is known so far, the videos taken after 10 p.m. from a police helicopter give a shockingly impressive picture of the dramatic flood situation in the Ahr Valley on the evening of July 14, 2021. So impressive that, according to the state government, the recordings are currently not allowed to be shown publicly because people in great need can be seen there and personal rights could be violated. “Once you’ve seen the films, there are no longer any doubts about the situation at night,” says Stephan Wefelscheid, the chairman of the Free Voters in the U-Committee.

Videos were apparently deliberately withheld by the Ministry of the Interior

Last Friday (September 23, 2022) Roger Lewentz declared in the investigative committee of the state parliament that he was not aware of the videos before they were shown to him there. According to SWR information, they were on a list of possible evidence for the investigative committee almost a year ago. That is, they must have been known to the Home Office.

However, the videos were not made available to the committee at the time – and also until the beginning of last week – because they were categorized as “not essential” for the educational work. It is unclear whether this was done with or without the minister’s knowledge. However, both cast a bad light on the SPD politician.

Possibly broken deal with opposition

Should it be confirmed that the Ministry of the Interior or the subordinate police headquarters in Koblenz deliberately declared the videos to be not so important for the committee, that would be a serious breach of trust. Because the opposition parties CDU, AfD and Free Voters had reached an agreement with the state government at the beginning of the committee work. In order not to overload the Koblenz police headquarters with the provision of files and data – including audio and videos – on the night of the flood, the “essential” content should first be filtered out and made available.

A few weeks ago, AfD chairman Michael Frisch then requested additional data and files for the committee. Among them, committee members accidentally discovered the videos from the police helicopter on a USB stick last week.

Minister Lewentz did not commission any clarification himself

The only really recognizable attempt by the interior minister to get a picture of the situation with his own eyes on the evening of the flood was his visit to the technical operations center in the Ahrweiler district. When he drove away around 7:30 p.m., he said there was no evidence of a flash flood or an impending disaster. Lewentz described everything that later reached him in the form of reports and findings as individual events. These included collapsed houses and people who had to be rescued from rooftops or campsites.

However, the initiative to send a police helicopter to the Ahr Valley in order to obtain a comprehensive picture of the situation came from an employee of the situation center in the Ministry of the Interior, not from the Minister himself. Lewentz was sitting in the office of his private home on the evening of the flood, where he said he was trying to to keep up to date. It is not known why Lewentz himself did not commission “reconnaissance” by police helicopters at an early stage.

RLP

For the Rhineland-Palatinate Interior Minister Roger Lewentz (SPD), the air is getting thinner: after his appearance on Friday in the flood investigation committee, the CDU and AfD are demanding his resignation.
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It is also difficult to explain why allegedly neither the employees in the situation center nor the minister asked what the helicopter had brought back from its reconnaissance flight. According to the statements of employees, the situation center only received individual photos showing the flooded town of Blame. These were also forwarded to Lewentz. Nobody claims to have known anything about the videos.

The Koblenz public prosecutor sees an urgent need for clarification

The investigating public prosecutor’s office in Koblenz will now also deal with the videos. The authority now has the videos after they were requested from the committee of inquiry. According to the public prosecutor’s office, they had no knowledge of the fact that a police helicopter took the pictures of the Ahr flood. According to senior public prosecutor Dietmar Moll, urgent clarification is needed as to why the recordings have only now been made available by the Ministry of the Interior.

It is now being examined whether the investigations by the public prosecutor’s office might have to be expanded. They have definitely become more complex. Moll did not rule out that the number of accused could possibly increase. So far, the authority in Koblenz has been investigating the former district administrator of Ahrweiler, Jürgen Pföhler, (CDU) and another suspect because of possibly too late warnings and evacuations.