Alps Co-Pilot Treated For Suicidal Tendencies

The co-pilot in the French Alps plane disaster was treated for suicidal tendencies in the past, German prosecutors have said.

But prosecutors' spokesman, Christoph Kumpa, told a news conference in Dusseldorf that Andreas Lubitz, 27, had not been treated recently.

He said: "There still is no evidence that the co-pilot told before that he'll do what we have to assume was done and we haven't found a letter or anything like that that contains a confession.

"Added to this, we have not found anything in the surrounding be it personal, or his family, or his professional surrounding, that is giving us any hints that enable us to say anything about his motivation.

"We have found medical documentation that show no organic medical illness.

"The co-pilot has been, before he got his pilot's licence, in psychotherapy. He had at that time been in treatment of a psychotherapist because of what is documented as being suicidal at that time.

"In the following time, up to now, right until he took the plane, there have been several visits at medical doctors and we have found as we have already communicated evidence that his doctors documented him to be unable to work and to fly.

"But these documents don't show any hint of being suicidal or being aggressive against other people."

Mr Kumpa added that there was no evidence Lubitz was suffering any problems with his sight.

The Germanwings co-pilot is believed to have deliberately crashed Flight 4U 9525 last week, killing all those on board.

He had been given a sick note on the day of the crash , but the note was never submitted to Germanwings.

Police found medicines for the treatment of psychological conditions during searches of Lubitz's home in Dusseldorf.

A summary of the transcript of recordings from the voice recorder on board, published by German newspaper Bild, revealed Lubitz began the descent after the captain left the cockpit .

The voice recorder also picked up the captain shouting "open the damn door" as he desperately attempted to get back into the cockpit as the plane went down.

Investigators have so far been unable to find the aircraft's second black box, which would provide technical flight data of its final moments.

It comes after French prosecutors said the DNA of 78 of the 150 people on board have been identified.

Recovery teams have described the difficulty of the search for victims as "unprecedented" because of the mountainous terrain and the violence of the impact.

Patrick Touron, deputy director of the French police's criminal research institute, said: "We haven't found a single body intact.

"We have slopes of 40 to 60 degrees, falling rocks, and ground that tends to crumble."

He added that in catastrophes, normally around 90% of identifications are done through dental records, but that DNA would most likely play a greater role in normal with the Germanwings crash.