The paraglider, who made a breakneck emergency landing in the Munich Arena with flight maneuvers overhead in front of 14,500 spectators during a Greenpeace protest during the 2021 European Football Championship, must answer in court. The Munich I public prosecutor has brought charges against the then 38-year-old. This was announced by the authority on Tuesday. A helper of the environmental protection activists should also be prosecuted.
Charges were brought before the lay judge at the Munich district court on December 13th. The Munich public prosecutor’s office accuses the pilot, who comes from Pforzheim in Baden-Württemberg, of willful endangerment of air traffic and negligent bodily harm in two cases. The Criminal Code provides for up to ten years in prison. During the European Championship games, a no-fly zone was in effect over the stadium, extending up to 3,000 meters.
Only five minutes flight time
According to the current state of investigation, the accused S. is said to have started a flight with his electric paraglider at 8:55 p.m. “from an unknown location north-east of the Allianz Arena”. He probably had other helpers who could not be identified so far, says senior public prosecutor Anne Leiding. The European Championship game between France and Germany was to be kicked off at 9 p.m. S. flew over the venue just above the roof of the Allianz Arena and dropped a large, yellow, air-inflated ball from a height of 52 meters. Shortly thereafter – millions of television viewers could follow this on their screens – the aircraft got caught in a lightning rod. S. lost control of the paraglider, the aircraft crashed at up to 55 kilometers per hour in a nosedive and, according to the public prosecutor’s office, “uncontrolled” just a few meters above the lower tier of the west stand.
Two people were injured: a 36-year-old employee of French television and a 42-year-old doping control officer from the European football association UEFA from Ukraine. Both required hospital treatment. The fact that nothing worse happened is probably due to a stroke of luck – also for the pilot. “If the police had come to the conclusion that it was a terrorist attack, he would have had to pay for it with his life,” Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) said at the time. “The deployed snipers already had him in their sights.” It is possible that only a “Greenpeace” lettering on the paraglider and a verbal warning to the police by his helper, who is now also accused, directly during the approach saved the activist from being shot down.
Protest against Volkswagen
S. had planned his overflight as a political protest. “Kick out the oil!” stood on the dropped latex ball. The protest was aimed at the EM sponsor Volkswagen. The landing in the stadium – in the immediate vicinity of the German defenders Mats Hummels and Antonio Rüdiger – was not planned according to Greenpeace. The environmental organization apologized after the incident and said it had learned lessons from the near-disaster. “We will no longer fly over crowds,” said a spokesman in an interview at the time. And: “We will continue to pay meticulous attention to safety and non-violence.”