Bavaria to pay 195,000 euros for convicted attacker's repatriation

The state of Bavaria will bear the 195,000 euro cost for the chartered flight used to repatriate a convicted attacker from Colombia. An investigation by the Ansbach Public Prosecutor's Office determined that these costs cannot be recovered from the individual.

The man, who was sentenced in 2010 for 47 counts of attempted murder following a 2009 school attack in Ansbach, had been ordered to indefinite psychiatric confinement. In August 2025, he failed to return to the Erlangen Forensic Psychiatry clinic following an unsupervised outing and fled to South America.

Authorities were forced to charter a private aircraft because regular commercial airlines would not transport a restrained passenger. The prosecutor's office explained that the original court ruling had exempted the perpetrator from paying legal costs, which legally includes enforcement costs such as the repatriation flight.

While the man's failure to return was not considered a criminal offense in itself, authorities are pursuing charges of prisoner liberation against his parents, who are accused of assisting his flight to Colombia.