No grounds to link Germanwings Airbus crash to terrorism — Marseille prosecutor
France’s Prosecutor’s Office has no grounds to believe that the Germanwings Airbus crash was a terrorist attack, a Marseille prosecutor leading the investigation said on Thursday, TASS reported.
Andreas Lubitz, 28, a co-pilot at Flight 9525, was not on the list of wanted terrorists.
Lubitz intentionally started the descent while another pilot was locked out of the cockpit, the prosecutor said.
Earlier on Thursday, the French newspaper Le Monde reported that the co-pilot was alone in the cockpit at the moment of the crash. This information confirmed The New York Times report that one of the pilots exited the cockpit before the accident.
A Germanwings Airbus-320 en route from Barcelona to Duuseldorf crashed on March 24 in mountainous terrain in the department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, southern France. All 150 people onboard, including 144 passengers and six crew, died in the crash.