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ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A stationmaster accused of causing Greece’s
deadliest train disaster was charged with negligent homicide and jailed
pending trial Sunday, while Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis apologized
for any responsibility Greece’s government may bear for the tragedy.
An examining magistrate and a prosecutor agreed that multiple counts of homicide as well as charges of causing bodily harm and endangering transportation safety 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 city of Larissa, in central Greece.
The 59-year-old stationmaster allegedly directed the two trains traveling
in opposite directions onto the same track. He spent 7 1/2 hours Sunday testifying about the events leading up to the crash before he was charged
and ordered held.
“My client testified truthfully, without fearing if doing so would
incriminate him,” Stephanos Pantzartzidis, the stationmaster’s lawyer,
told reporters. “The decision (to jail him) was expected, given the
importance of the case.”
Pantzartzidis implied that others besides his client share 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 in charge of (train) safety in all central
Greece,” the lawyer said of his client.
Greek media have reported that the automated signaling system in the area
of the crash was not functioning, making the stationmaster’s mistake
possible. Stationmasters along that part of Greece’s main trunk line communicate with each other and with train drivers via two-way radios, and
the switches are operated manually.
The prime minister promised a swift investigation of the collision and
said the new Greek transportation minister would release a safety
improvement plan. Once a new parliament is in place, a commission also
will be named to investigate decades of mismanagement of the country’s
railway system, Mitsotakis said.
In an initial statement Wednesday, Mitsotakis had said the crash resulted
from a “tragic human error.” Opposition parties pounced on the remark,
accusing the prime minister of trying to cover up the state’s role and
making the inexperienced stationmaster a scapegoat.
“I owe everyone, and especially the victims’ relatives, a big apology,
both personal and on behalf of all who governed the country for many
years,” Mitsotakis wrote Sunday on Facebook. “In 2023, it is inconceivable
that two trains move in different directions on the same track and no one notices. We cannot, we do not want to, and we must not hide behind the
human error.”
Greece’s railways long suffered from chronic mismanagement, including
lavish spending on projects that were eventually abandoned or
significantly delayed, Greek media have reported in several exposes. With
state railway company Hellenic Railways billions of euros in debt,
maintenance work was put off, according to news reports.
A retired railway union leader, Panayotis Paraskevopoulos, told Greek
newspaper Kathimerini that the signaling system in the area monitored by
the Larissa stationmaster malfunctioned six years ago and was never
repaired.
Police and prosecutors have not identified the stationmaster, in line with Greek law. However, Hellenic Railways, also known as OSE, revealed the stationmaster’s name Saturday, in an announcement suspending the company inspector who appointed him. The stationmaster also has been suspended.
Greek media have reported that the stationmaster, a former porter with the railway company, was transferred to a Ministry of Education desk job in
2011, when Greece’s creditors demanded reductions in the number of public employees. The 59-year-old was transferred back to the railway company in mid-2022 and started a 5-month course to train as a stationmaster.
Upon completing the course, he was assigned to Larissa on Jan. 23,
according to his own Facebook post. However, he spent the next month month rotating among other stations before returning to Larissa in late
February, days before the Feb. 28 collision, Greek media reported.
On Sunday, railway unions organized a protest rally in central Athens
attended by about 12,000 people according to authorities.
Five people were arrested and seven police officers were injured when a
group of more than 200 masked, black-clad individuals started throwing
pieces of marble, rocks, bottles and firebombs at officers, who gave chase along a central avenue in the city while using tear gas and stun grenades.
In Thessaloniki, about 3,000 people attended two protest rallies. Several
of the crash victims were students at the city’s Aristotle University,
Greece’s largest, with over 50,000 students..
The larger protest, organized by left-wing activists, marched to a
government building. No incidents were reported at that event.
In the other, staged by Communist Party members at the White Tower, the
city’s signature monument, there was a brief scuffle with police when the protesters tried to place a banner on the monument.
“The Communist Party organized a symbolic protest today in front of the
White Tower to denounce the crime in Tempe, because it is a premeditated
crime, a crime committed by the company and the bourgeois state that
supports these companies,” Giannis Delis, a communist lawmaker, told The Associated Press.
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https://apnews.com/article/crash-deaths-protests-mitsotakis-apology- railways-13c29e105bdfcd09e605e53d2251c9c2>
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