BERLIN--The Germanwings co-pilot who is believed to have crashed
an airliner into a French mountainside had been undergoing
psychotherapy because of suicidal thoughts over an extended period
of time before he obtained his pilot license, the German
prosecutors in charge of the case said Monday.
The statement confirms comments from a person close to the
investigation who had said Andreas Lubitz had been treated for
depression, a fact he concealed from his employer.
"A few years ago, the co-pilot had been in psycho-therapeutic
treatment with noted suicide risk over a long period of time before
he gained his pilot licence," Düsseldorf prosecutor Ralf
Herrenbrück said in a statement. "In the ensuing period and up
until now, further visits to the doctors that resulted in excuses
from work took place without suicide risk or aggression against
third parties."
The prosecutors said their investigation and interviews with
witnesses had so far uncovered no sign that Mr. Lubitz was planning
to deliberately crash an airplane. Neither could they establish a
motive for such an act, they said.
The medical documents seized in the course of the investigation
showed no evidence that Mr. Lubitz was suffering from any physical
ailments.
French prosecutors have said Mr. Lubitz, who was 27 years old,
appeared to have locked the captain of Germanwings Flight 9525 out
of the cockpit, programmed the A320's descent and slammed it into
an Alpine ridge at 400 miles an hour on Tuesday, killing all 150
people aboard.
Write to Andrea Thomas at andrea.thomas@wsj.com
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