A Greenpeace activist had failed to crash with his ULM before France – Germany.
The Greenpeace activist who almost crashed with his ULM in the stands Tuesday, June 15 before the start of the France-Germany Euro match in Munich, narrowly avoided being shot by police snipers, German authorities revealed on Wednesday.
Things have gone wrong
The man, who wanted to take advantage of the holding of the summit football meeting to draw public attention to environmental protection, intended to “fly” over the stadium, the environmental organization said. But things took a turn for the worse and he found himself propelled inside the compound.
“Snipers already had it in their sights,” Joachim Herrmann said Wednesday the Minister of the Interior of the region of Bavaria, of which Munich is the capital. “If the police had determined that it was a terrorist attack, he would have paid for it with his life,” he added.
The shooters did not finally give up pulling the trigger until they saw the Greenpeace logo on the para-sail, he explained.
In the stadium, two men, a 36-year-old Frenchman and a 42-year-old Ukrainian, were slightly injured during the passage of the machine, which had become uncontrollable, at the level of the stands.
Debris from the ULM landed near the French camp. Guy Stéphan and Didier Deschamps took refuge on the bench, but the coach injured his head. “I have a small bump, it’s nothing. We came close to the drama. It could have been more serious. It does not have to be,” said the coach of the Blues.
The pilot of the ULM type machine “should have fly over the stadium and drop a balloon in latex “with the message” Kick out Oil “, according to Greenpeace, which apologized.
But he struck a cable carrying the “Spider cam”, a camera allowing aerial shots. It was then difficult to restore control before grazing a grandstand and crashing on the lawn of the Allianz Arena.
“Irresponsible”
The 38-year-old pilot residing in the German region of Baden-Württemberg, in southwestern Germany, escaped the landing unscathed before being arrested.
He was released on Wednesday. But he is being prosecuted for “dangerous injuries”, “intrusion”, “threat of air transport” and other offenses under the aviation legislation, which strictly limits the possibilities of overflight, said the police.
UEFA condemned a “reckless act” and the German Federation (DFB) deemed the action “unacceptable”. “We are sorry that the protest action did not go as planned” and “regret that people were endangered and injured,” said Greenpeace for its part.
The NGO’s message was addressed to the car manufacturer Volkswagen, one of the main sponsors of the Euro.
