Gut half a year after the fatal traffic accident of former professional cyclist Davide Rebellin, a German truck driver was arrested in North Rhine-Westphalia. The man presented himself to the authorities in Steinfurt on Thursday, accompanied by his defense attorney, senior public prosecutor Elmar Pleus from the Hamm public prosecutor’s office said on Saturday on request. The Italian authorities had previously announced that the German had been arrested thanks to a European arrest warrant.
The man is said to have hit the former world-class athlete Rebellin on November 30 near the northern Italian town of Montebello Vicentino with his articulated lorry on an exit and fatally injured him. Rebellin, who had recently ended his professional career, was on a training ride. As the public prosecutor’s office further announced, the man is in extradition custody in Münster. The Senate of the Hamm Higher Regional Court is examining whether a formal extradition arrest warrant will be issued.
Delivery to Italy
He is accused of homicide – a criminal offense in Italy – and failure to provide assistance. According to EU law, the German judiciary has 60 days to decide whether to extradite the man to Italy. If the defendant agrees to a transfer, he must be brought to Italy within ten days.
As the Carabinieri went on to explain, evaluations of the surveillance cameras at the scene of the accident, witness statements and joint investigations with authorities in Austria, Slovenia and Germany had shown that the long-distance driver and his semitrailer were involved in the accident. It was also determined that the man got out after the accident, approached the rebel who was lying on the ground, but then climbed back into the driver’s cab and drove away.
After the vehicle was secured at the end of December, examinations of the bodywork revealed damage that matched a collision with a bicycle, it said. The experts also found that the truck had been cleaned with a strong cleaning agent at that point after the accident.
Rebellin was a specialist in one-day races and in 2004 he won the classic Amstel Gold Race, Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège for the German team Gerolsteiner within a week. In 1996 he also won a stage of the Giro d’Italia. He later wrote negative headlines when he was stripped of his Olympic silver medal in Beijing in 2008 because of doping. Follow-up checks in April 2009 had convicted him of taking the blood doping drug Cera. He was banned for two years, but always denied doping offenses and fraud to the end.