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German police take evidence from A320 crash copilot's home

German police seized on Friday a number of items at the homes of Andreas Lubitz the copilot who appears to have deiberately crashed the Germanwings A320 flight in the French Alps on Tuesday.

Germanwings Airbus A320 copilot Andreas Lubitz from his Facebook page
Germanwings Airbus A320 copilot Andreas Lubitz from his Facebook page Reuters/Str
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"Various objects and papers" were seized at Lubitz's Dusseldorf apartment and at his parents' home in the west German town of Montabaur, Dusseldorf police spokesperson Marcel Fiebig said on Friday. 

A person with their face covered left with police, who also took two plastic bags full of material and a computer hard drive. 

But Fiebig said that reports in the British media that a significant find had been made were the result of a misunderstanding. 

Lubitz, 27, had been treated for serious depression for 18 months starting in 2009, according to the German tabloid Bild

The paper also claimed that the pilot used an axe to try to break into the cockpit after Lubitz locked him out and flew the plane into a mountainside, killing himself and the other 149 people on board. 

A Germanwings official confirmed that an axe is part of the safety equipment of an A320. 

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls confirmed Friday that all the evidence pointed to the copilot deliberately crashing the plane, describing it as a "mad, incomprehensible gesture". 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the revelation added an "absolutely unimaginable dimension" to the tragedy, in which most victims were German and Spanish nationals. 

Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he was "deeply shaken" by the news and sent his "heartfelt affection" to the victims' families, dozens of whom had arrived near the crash site in France. 

The search of the crash site in the French Alps began again for the fourth consecutive day on Friday morning. 

The most urgent tasks were to find the second flight recorder and identify the victims' remains. 

A French pilots' trade union, the SNPL, is to lodge a legal complaint for breach of confidentiality over the revelation of the contents of the first black box in some media;

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