German rail engineers on trial for manslaughter over crash

THREE railway engineers went on trial for manslaughter yesterday, four years after a train crash that killed 101 people.

In June 1998, in Germany’s worst post-war rail disaster, a high-speed Inter-City Express (ICE) jumped the rails near Eschede at a speed of 120mph, sending the train ploughing into a road bridge, which collapsed and crushed several carriages.

The men on trial are Volker Fischer, 56, and Joachim Thilo von Madeyski, 67, from Germany’s rail operator, Deutsche Bahn, and Franz Murawa, 55, from the steel and engineering group, ThyssenKrupp. They face 101 counts of manslaughter and complicity in the injury of another 105 people. They deny the charges.

The American lawyer Ed Fagan, famed for his efforts to get compensation from foreign investors for victims of South African apartheid, said that he would bring charges against Deutsche Bahn and ThyssenKrupp in New York for a client involved in the accident.

There was silence in the courtroom in Celle, the nearest main town to Eschede, as the list of dead and injured was read out. Several dozen survivors among the 105 injured in the crash sat alongside relatives of the victims, many with their heads bowed.

The public prosecutor’s office said that the accused were responsible for the accident because of their carelessness in introducing a new type of wheel. The three engineers, who were involved in the manufacture and licensing of the wheel, which is believed to have caused the train to jump the rails, listened to the charges, but declined to comment.

A broken ring from inside the wheel was displayed in the courtroom alongside models of the stretch of track in Eschede. "Without indispensable evidence of its resistance to fatigue, the new type of wheel should not have been allowed to have been fitted to the ICE, or at least only with a sufficient safety margin," the prosecutor, Hans Probst, said. The possibility of the wheel’s ring tearing open should have become evident before it was brought into service in the spring of 1992.

A defence lawyer, Walther Graf, said that the charges were based on incorrect expert opinions. He said that evidence from other experts would show that the wheel’s ring was suitable for use at high speeds.

Heinrich Loewen, who lost his wife and daughter in the crash and is a spokesman for relatives, said the trial was about making sure financial concerns were never again put ahead of safety.