German railway guilty of manslaughter nine years after deadly Paris-Munich crash
German railway Deutsche Bahn, DB, has been fined 160.000 euros by a court of appeal on Tuesday in the French eastern city of Nancy on charges of manslaughter nine years after a fire on a train between Paris and Munich left 12 people dead.
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Both DB and the state-owned French railways, SNCF, had previously been found not guilty.
The accident happened on 6 November on an overnight express train heading for Munich which burst into flames as it was passing through the city of Nancy. The train had left Paris three hours earlier.
Train conducter Volker Janz, who was originally give a one-year suspended-sentence by a Magistrates Court in 2011, saw his sentence doubled by the appeals court for failing to come to the aid of passengers.
Janz had locked the door linking a damaged carriage to the rest of the train leaving passengers trapped in the blaze.
The court found DB guilty of negligence for not providing enough fire prevention equipment including extinguishers.
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