By Demetris Nellas and Costas Kantouris | Related Press
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A stationmaster accused of inflicting Greece’s deadliest practice catastrophe was charged with negligent murder and jailed pending trial Sunday, whereas Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis apologized for any accountability Greece’s authorities might bear for the tragedy.
An inspecting Justice of the Peace and a prosecutor agreed that a number of counts of murder in addition to prices of inflicting bodily hurt and endangering transportation security must be introduced towards the railway worker.
A minimum of 57 folks, lots of them of their teenagers and 20s, have been killed when a northbound passenger practice and a southbound freight practice collided late Tuesday north of the town of Larissa, in central Greece.
The 59-year-old stationmaster allegedly directed the 2 trains touring in reverse instructions onto the identical observe. He spent 7 1/2 hours Sunday testifying in regards to the occasions main as much as the crash earlier than he was charged and ordered held.
“My shopper testified honestly, with out fearing if doing so would incriminate him,” Stephanos Pantzartzidis, the stationmaster’s lawyer, informed reporters. “The choice (to jail him) was anticipated, given the significance of the case.”
Pantzartzidis implied that others moreover his shopper share blame, saying that judges ought to examine whether or not a couple of stationmaster ought to have been working in Larissa on the time of the collision.
“For 20 minutes, he was accountable for (practice) security in all central Greece,” the lawyer stated of his shopper.
Greek media have reported that the automated signaling system within the space of the crash was not functioning, making the stationmaster’s mistake attainable. Stationmasters alongside that a part of Greece’s most important trunk line talk with one another and with practice drivers through two-way radios, and the switches are operated manually.
The prime minister promised a swift investigation of the collision and stated the brand new Greek transportation minister would launch a security enchancment plan. As soon as a brand new parliament is in place, a fee additionally shall be named to research many years of mismanagement of the nation’s railway system, Mitsotakis stated.
In an preliminary assertion Wednesday, Mitsotakis had stated the crash resulted from a “tragic human error.”
Opposition events pounced on the comment, accusing the prime minister of attempting to cowl up the state’s position and making the inexperienced stationmaster a scapegoat.
“I owe everybody, and particularly the victims’ kin, an enormous apology, each private and on behalf of all who ruled the nation for a few years,” Mitsotakis wrote Sunday on Fb. “In 2023, it's inconceivable that two trains transfer in several instructions on the identical observe and nobody notices. We can't, we don't wish to, and we should not disguise behind the human error.”
Greece’s railways lengthy suffered from persistent mismanagement, together with lavish spending on initiatives that have been finally deserted or considerably delayed, Greek media have reported in a number of exposes. With state railway firm Hellenic Railways billions of euros in debt, upkeep work was delay, in line with information studies.
A retired railway union chief, Panayotis Paraskevopoulos, informed Greek newspaper Kathimerini that the signaling system within the space monitored by the Larissa stationmaster malfunctioned six years in the past and was by no means repaired.
Police and prosecutors haven't recognized the stationmaster, consistent with Greek regulation. Nonetheless, Hellenic Railways, also referred to as OSE, revealed the stationmaster’s identify Saturday, in an announcement suspending the corporate inspector who appointed him. The stationmaster additionally has been suspended.
Greek media have reported that the stationmaster, a former porter with the railway firm, was transferred to a Ministry of Schooling desk job in 2011 when Greece’s collectors demanded reductions within the variety of public staff. The 59-year-old was transferred again to the railway firm in mid-2022 and began a 5-month course to coach as a stationmaster.
Upon finishing the course, he was assigned to Larissa on Jan. 23, in line with his personal Fb put up. Nonetheless, he spent the following month rotating amongst different stations earlier than returning to Larissa in late February, days earlier than the Feb. 28 collision, Greek media reported.
On Sunday, railway unions organized a protest rally in central Athens attended by about 12,000 folks in line with authorities.
5 folks have been arrested and 7 law enforcement officials have been injured when a bunch of greater than 200 masked, black-clad people began throwing items of marble, rocks, bottles and firebombs at officers, who gave chase alongside a central avenue within the metropolis whereas utilizing tear gasoline and stun grenades.
In Thessaloniki, about 3,000 folks attended two protest rallies. A number of of the crash victims have been college students on the metropolis’s Aristotle College, Greece’s largest, with over 50,000 college students.
The bigger protest, organized by left-wing activists, marched to a authorities constructing. No incidents have been reported at that occasion.
Within the different, staged by Communist Occasion members on the White Tower, the town’s signature monument, there was a short scuffle with police when the protesters tried to put a banner on the monument.
“The Communist Occasion organized a symbolic protest immediately in entrance of the White Tower to denounce the crime in Tempe as a result of it's a premeditated crime, against the law dedicated by the corporate and the bourgeois state that helps these corporations,” Giannis Delis, a communist lawmaker, informed The Related Press.
Kantouris reported from Thessaloniki, Greece