PARIS - Air France and Airbus have been found not guilty of involuntary homicide in a criminal trial over the 2009 crash of a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris that killed 228 passengers and crew. The national carrier and plane manufacturing giant had been charged over their alleged role in the disaster after a previous investigation was dropped in 2019. “Looking at the science at the time, no criminal liability seems to me to be applicable,” one of the magistrates said, according to CNN affiliate BFMTV. The acquittal was confirmed in an abstract of the court’s ruling provided by the Paris prosecutor’s office. State prosecutors had taken the unusual step of admitting to the court that it was “impossible” to pin the blame on either company, BFMTV reported. “That is the part of the decision that we cannot — we do not — know how to be satisfied by, because nothing in our world, in our age, can justify that 228 people took a flight leaving Rio for Paris and never landed,” David Koubbi, a lawyer representing some of the families of victims of the crash.
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