Duisburg Mayor Escapes Investigation

Although Duisburg Mayor Adolf Sauerland and Love Parade organiser Rainer Schaller both faced heavy criticism over the crowd crush that resulted in 21 deaths at last year’s event, they’re not among the 16 people being investigated by German prosecutors.

On Jan. 18 Duisburg city prosecutor Rolf Haferkamp confirmed neither is included among the 16 city employees, police officers and members of the event management under suspicion of negligent homicide and bodily injury caused by negligence.

The disaster, which happened at the mouth of the tunnel entrance to the former railway freight depot where Love Parade was held July 24, drew an angry reaction from two of the country’s biggest festival promoters.

Marek Lieberberg, who promotes the twinned Rock am Ring and Rock im Park festivals, called for Sauerland to resign because it was “criminal” to allow the event to go ahead.

“Somebody has signed off on this and that’s the part that I can’t understand,” FKP Scorpio chief Folkert Koopmans told Pollstar immediately after the investigation was launched.