BERLIN, June 14 (Xinhua) -- The terror warning for the Rock am Ring music festival was caused by a spelling error in the names of two helpers employed by a subcontractor to the event, the President of the Rhineland-Palatinate state criminal police (LKA) Johannes Kunz told German newspaper Mainzer Allgemeine Zeitung on Wednesday.
"The names of the two suspects, while spelled wrong, were phonetically similar to the correct spelling," Kunz said.
The music festival Rock am Ring in the German city of Nuerburg, hosting 87,000 attendees, was interrupted and evacuated on June 2 due to "concrete evidence of a terrorist threat."
Two helpers holding passes granting them access to all areas of the festival could not be validated by the event organizer's personnel list. German police subsequently issued an official terror warning, assessing the festival's security as compromised.
The State Ministry of the Interior confirmed the suspicion of a connection to Hessian Salafist extremists at that time.
"This situation was still serious, we could not rule out that an attack was being prepared," Kunz added.
In light of the spelling errors, the LKA President demanded that in the future personnel lists for major events should be made available to the authorities earlier.
