ATHENS, Greece (AP) – A station manager has been charged with causing Greece’s deadliest train disaster He was charged with negligent homicide and jailed pending trial on Sunday, while Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis apologized for any responsibility the Greek government may have for the tragedy.
The examining magistrate and the public prosecutor agreed that multiple counts of murder as well as charges of causing bodily harm and endangering the safety of transport should be brought against the railway employee.
At least 57 people, many of them in their teens and 20s, were killed when a northbound passenger train and a southbound freight train collided late Tuesday north of the central Greek city of Larissa.
The 59-year-old station manager is alleged to have directed the two trains traveling in opposite directions on the same track. Sunday spent 7 and a half hours testifying about the events Which led to the crash of the plane before he was charged and ordered to be detained.
“My client gave his testimony truthfully, without fear that it would incriminate him,” Stefanos Pantzartzidis, the station manager’s lawyer, told reporters. The decision (to imprison him) was expected given the importance of the case.”
Pantzartzidis noted that others besides his client shared the blame, saying that judges should investigate whether more than one stationmaster should have been working in Larissa at the time of the collision.
“For 20 minutes, he was responsible for the safety of (the trains) in all of central Greece,” the lawyer said of his client.
Greek media reported that the automated signaling system in the area of the accident was not working, making possible stationmaster error. Station officials along this section of the Greece Main Line communicate with each other and with train drivers via two-way radios, switches operated manually.
The prime minister promised a swift investigation into the collision and said Greece’s new transport minister would issue a plan to improve safety. Once the new parliament is formed, Mitsotakis said, a committee will be appointed to investigate decades of mismanagement of the country’s rail system.
In a preliminary statement on Wednesday, Mitsotakis said the accident was caused by “tragic human error.” Opposition parties criticized the statement, accusing the prime minister of trying to cover up the role of the state and made the inexperienced stationmaster a scapegoat.
“I owe a huge apology to everyone, especially the relatives of the victims, personally and on behalf of everyone who ruled the country for so many years,” Mitsotakis wrote on Facebook on Sunday. “In the year 2023, it is inconceivable that two trains are moving in different directions on the same track and no one notices. We can’t, we don’t want to, and we shouldn’t hide behind human error.”
Greece’s railways have long suffered from chronic mismanagement, including lavish spending on projects that were eventually abandoned or significantly delayed, Greek media reported in numerous reports. With the state-owned Hellenic Railways billions of euros in debt, maintenance work has been delayed, according to news reports.
Retired railway union leader Panagiotis Paraskivopoulos told Greek newspaper Kathimerini that the signaling system in the area monitored by the Larissa station manager broke down six years ago and was never fixed.
Police and prosecutors have not identified the station manager, in line with Greek law. However, Hellenic Railways, also known as OSE, revealed the name of the station manager on Saturday, in announcing the suspension of the company inspector he had appointed. The station manager has also been suspended.
Greek media reported that the station manager, a former porter for the railway company, was moved to an office job at the Education Ministry in 2011, when Greece’s creditors demanded cuts in public servants. The 59-year-old was transferred to the railway company in mid-2022 and started a 5-month course of training as a station master.
Upon completion of the course, he was assigned to Larisa on January 23, according to his Facebook post. However, he spent the next month rotating between other stops before returning to Larissa in late February, days before the Feb. 28 collision, Greek media reported.
On Sunday, the railway unions staged a protest rally In central Athens it was attended by about 12,000 people according to the authorities.
Five people were arrested and seven police officers were injured when a group of more than 200 masked men dressed in black began hurling marbles, rocks, bottles and petrol bombs at the officers, who chased along a central avenue in the city as they used teardrops. Gas and stun grenades.
In Thessaloniki, about 3,000 people took part in two protest demonstrations. Many of the victims of the accident were students at the city’s Aristotle University, the largest in Greece, with more than 50,000 students..
The largest protest, organized by left-wing activists, marched to a government building. No accidents were reported in this event.
In the second, organized by Communist Party members at the White Tower, the city’s memorial, there was a brief scuffle with police when demonstrators attempted to place a banner on the monument.
“Today the Communist Party staged a symbolic protest in front of the White Tower to denounce the crime in Tempe, because it is a premeditated crime, a crime committed by the corporation and the bourgeois state that supports these corporations,” Giannis Delice, a communist lawmaker, told the Associated Press.
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Cantoris reported from Thessaloniki, Greece