I know I should not react on a thread like this, but....
1. Without knowing all the fact there is no doubt in my mind the engineers went to work that morning with the mind-set of not doing their work to the best of their abilities.
2. Nobody in the airline industry working in safety critical places is going to his work with the idea of "let's have a crash today".
3. It's teeth crunching to see a judge (or juridical system) gets to draw the line in a safety critical industry. The negative effects of this involvement will be widespread (less volentary reporting, no cooperation with safety investigation etc).
I can only hope there will be european wide reaction to this involvement of the judge while the safety investigation is still ongoing....