Doctors who said Andreas Lubitz was unfit to fly before he deliberately plunged a jet into the French Alps kept their diagnosis to themselves because of German patient secrecy laws, a prosecutor said Thursday.
Lubitz had seen seven doctors including a psychiatrist in the weeks before the March 24 crash that killed 150 people including himself. Investigators learned of the doctors’ concerns only after searching Lubitz home in the aftermath of the Germanwings Flight 9525 tragedy.
“Unfortunately that information was not reported because of medical secrecy requirements,” Marseille Prosecutor Brice Robin told reporters in Paris.
In Germany, doctors risk prison if they disclose information about their patients to anyone unless there is evidence they intend to commit a serious crime or harm themselves.
Officials said that although Lubitz, 27, believed he was suffering career-threatening vision problems he had no actual physical ailments. He had seen more than 40 doctors in five years.
Robin met with families of victims Thursday and updated them on the status of the investigation. Robin said the investigation so far “has enabled us to confirm without a shadow of a doubt … Mr. Andreas Lubitz deliberately destroyed the plane and deliberately killed 150 people, including himself.”
Families are just starting to receive remains of the victims, and will start holding burials in the coming days and weeks.
Parent company Lufthansa has already admitted that ubitz told the company about his “depressive episodes” nearly six years before he commandeered the and killed everyone on board.
Lufthansa said that it had shared with prosecutors e-mail correspondence between Lubitz and the flight-training school, which included medical records about a “deep depressive episode.”
Negotiations have also begun with families over compensation.
‘In this moment everything else is not as important as the fact that the bodies, (the) remains be returned to their families, said German lawyer Peter Kortas, whose firm represents relatives of 34 victims.
Investigators only last month finished identifying the remains of all 150 people aboard the flight Lubitz encouraged his pilot, Patrick Sondenheimer, to leave the cockpit, then locked him out before rapidly descending in a chaotic scene that was eerily recorded on a passenger’s cellphone, according to reports.
Among the sights and sounds heard were Sondenheimer banging with an ax on the cockpit door desperately trying to get back inside.
With Post Wire Services