The investigation into an allegedly deliberately closed emergency exit at one of the scenes of the racist attack in Hanau remains closed.

The Frankfurt public prosecutor's office confirmed a corresponding decision by the Hanau public prosecutor's office, as a spokesman said on Wednesday in Frankfurt.

A complaint by survivors and relatives of the victims of the attack on February 19, 2021 against the termination of the investigation was thus rejected.

The “Frankfurter Rundschau” had previously reported on it.

In the attack, a 43-year-old German shot nine people for racist reasons and then killed his mother and himself.

One of the crime scenes was a bar in the Kesselstadt district of Hanau, where several people were killed.

Two survivors of the attack and relatives of one of the victims had raised the accusation of negligent homicide because an emergency exit in the bar had been closed and an escape route had been blocked.

After structural changes in the two years before the crime, the door could no longer be opened from the inside without a key.

There is evidence that local police officers knew about the original escape route in the bar and the locked emergency exit and that it was even locked on their orders.

decision confirmed

The public prosecutor's office investigated the allegations and stopped the investigation in August 2021.

There was no sufficient suspicion.

"There were no concrete indications that police officers or members of the public order office ordered or tolerated closing the emergency exit," the investigating authority said at the time.

It is also unclear whether two of the victims could have escaped through an unlocked emergency exit.

A spokesman for the Attorney General's Office said that the factual and legal situation had been extensively reviewed on the basis of the complaint.

As a result, the decision of the Hanau public prosecutor's office was confirmed.

On the other hand, an application for judicial review at the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court is now possible.

In mid-December 2021, the federal prosecutor's office had stopped its investigation into the attack altogether.

She had concluded that the assassin, who later killed himself, acted alone and had no accomplices.

# Places

# - [General Public Prosecutor Frankfurt](Zeil 42, 60313 Frankfurt am Main, Germany)

# The following information is not intended for publication

# Contact Person

# - Georg Ungefuk, Senior Public Prosecutor, Press Spokesman General Public Prosecutor Frankfurt am Main +49 69 1367-2253

# Contacts

# - Author: Jan Brinkhus (Frankfurt), +49 69 271634113, < frankfurt@dpa.com [mailto:frankfurt@dpa.com] >

# - Editor: Ronald Bahlburg (Berlin), +49 30 285230001, < deutschland-desk@dpa.com [mailto:deutschland-desk@dpa.com] >

# dpa hus yyhe n1 bb

# dpa hus yyhe n1 bb

# Georg Ungefuk, senior public prosecutor, spokesman for the general public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt am Main +49 69 1367-2253

# Author: Jan Brinkhus (Frankfurt), +49 69 271634113, <frankfurt@dpa.com>

# Editor: Ronald Bahlburg (Berlin), +49 30 285230001, <deutschland-desk@dpa.com>