Could the two people who the Hanau assassin shot in the Arena Bar on February 19, 2020 still be alive if their emergency exit hadn't been locked?

Yes, is the basic position of the Forensic Architecture research collective.

But his representative, the journalist Robert Trafford, triggered considerable criticism from a number of MPs in the investigative committee of the Hessian state parliament on Friday.

Ewald Hetrodt

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung in Wiesbaden.

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The FDP deputy Jörg-Uwe Hahn even felt compelled to ask whether the presentation could actually be called scientific.

This claim is linked to the establishment of the agency under the umbrella of the University of London.

According to Trafford, architects, artists, lawyers, specialists in video technology and other experts are researching around the world to clear up mistakes made by authorities or secret services.

doubts and debates

In this context, a video was made about the night in Hanau, which, as reported, has already been shown at the Frankfurter Kunstverein.

It is intended to prove that five guests in the Arena Bar would have had enough time to escape the perpetrator's attack through the emergency exit.

Trafford and his colleagues first evaluated the surveillance camera footage from the bar.

Based on the floor plan, the actual walking routes of the five people, including their respective speeds, were transferred to a hypothetical video animation.

According to this, the guests had exactly nine seconds after hearing the perpetrator's first shots in front of the bar.

That time would have been enough for four of them to be completely out of sight by the time the assassin entered the bar.

He could only see the fifth guest for fractions of a second at a distance of eight meters and could hardly be reached.

However, this scenario requires an open emergency exit.

The unproven thesis that this was locked serves as the basis for accusing the authorities of being complicit in the death of two guests in the arena.

At the meeting of the committee of inquiry, Robert Lambrou (AfD) and other MPs pointed out other premises that would have to be met if the scenario were to apply.

For example, it is assumed that the guests in the bar all started running as soon as they noticed the perpetrator.

In fact, however, a video from the files shows that two people "stayed" at the counter, as MP Michel Müller (CDU) put it.

He noted that the simulation presented by Forensic Architecture only considered the behavior of five guests.

In fact, seven were present.

There was not enough data on two of them, Trafford said.

One of the two was handicapped.

Trafford was unable to answer Müller's question of how far the emergency exit was from the position of the five incriminated guests.

The information was not in his written submission, he said.

But they are available and will be delivered later.

A “hypothetical scenario”

Trafford also remained vague when Müller worked out that several tables protruded so much into the room that they would have caused bottlenecks there.

They could have turned out to be an obstacle if several people had rushed to the emergency exit next to each other at the same time, Müller said.

There was no information on the exact distances between furniture and devices in the room.

When questioned, Trafford said neither he nor any other members of his team were able to see the space in person on the spot.

Member of Parliament Frank Kaufmann (Die Grünen) asked about the quantitative probability with which the guests would have survived the attack if the emergency exit was open and the knowledge about it.

Trafford also left this question open.

He only wanted his presentation to be seen as a “hypothetical scenario”.

One cannot expect it to contain every conceivable possibility.

Irrespective of this, Saadet Sönmez, the leader of the left-wing faction, spoke of a "scientifically sound clarification" after the four-hour questioning.

SPD MP Heike Hofmann praised Trafford's "clear answers".