The station master involved in Greece’s deadliest train accident will appear in court on Sunday accused of placing two trains running in opposite directions on the same track, after his arraignment was delayed from Saturday.
At least 57 people were killed when a passenger train crashed into a freighter Tuesday night in Tempe, 235 miles north of Athens.
The government has blamed human error, and the 59-year-old stationmaster faces charges of negligent homicide and bodily harm, as well as disrupting transportation.
Days of protests against the perception of lack of security measures on the Greek rail network have taken place after the disaster.
Stephanos Pantzartzidis, the stationmaster’s lawyer, told reporters waiting outside the courthouse in the central Greek city of Larissa on Saturday that “very important new evidence has emerged that compels us to request a stay” in his client’s statement. , or the delivery of evidence under oath.
Tuesday’s rail accident was the deadliest recorded in Greece, killing at least 57 people, 54 of whom have been identified.
Workers supported by a crane try to remove rubble from the train tracks after the collision in Tempe, north of Athens.
Authorities have not released the name of the accused stationmaster.
Funerals for some of the people who died in the crash, many of them in their teens and early twenties, were held in northern Greece.
The force of the crash and the resulting fire complicated the task of identifying the victims, which is done through DNA testing of relatives.
Some families have yet to receive the remains of their loved ones. Police said 54 people have been positively identified.
Protest demonstrations against the conditions that led to the tragedy continued on Saturday.
A peaceful demonstration in the center of Athens organized by the youth wing of the Communist Party drew more than a thousand people.
In Athens many they also gathered to mourn the lives lost in the tragedy. They were photographed lighting candles and releasing black balloons.
Also on Saturday, one of three members of a government-appointed panel of experts to investigate and issue a report on the collision resigned after opposition parties and some media criticized his appointment.
Thanasis Ziliaskopoulos served as the president and CEO of the country’s train operator from 2010 to 2015 and is currently the president of the Greek agency in charge of privatizing state assets.
A demonstration organized by a railway workers’ union is scheduled for Sunday, also in Athens.
The union, which is organizing ongoing labor strikes, has called on members of the public to get involved.
People stage a demonstration in front of the Greek Parliament in Athens, Greece, on Friday after the accident.
Citizens marched in Athens to protest the death of at least 57 people when a passenger train and a freight train collided
Firefighters and rescuers operate after a collision in Tempe, near the city of Larissa, Greece, Wednesday, March 1, 2023.
Debris from trains lies on the railway tracks after a collision in Tempe, about 235 miles (376 kilometers) north of Athens, near the city of Larissa, Greece, on Wednesday, March 1, 2023.
People hold candles and black balloons to honor the 57 victims of Greece’s deadliest train accident, during a protest outside Parliament in Athens, Greece, on March 3, 2023.
People unite in Greece to mourn the loss of 57 people and demand change in the rail industry
The Greek media have published damning reports on the mismanagement and neglect of infrastructure on Greece’s railways.
Protesters blame Tuesday’s accident on the government’s lack of investment in the railways, a consequence of austerity between 2010 and 2017, and on the train operator.
The violent collision sent carriages being thrown off the tracks, crushed and engulfed in flames as a high-speed passenger train with more than 350 people on board collided head-on with a freight train at speeds thought to be up to 100 miles per hour.
A former head of the railway employees’ union, Panayotis Paraskevopoulos, told the Greek newspaper Kathimerini that the signaling system in the area where the accident occurred had not worked six years ago and was never repaired.
Station masters and train drivers communicate via two-way radio and track changes are manually operated on parts of the main rail line from the capital Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki.
The stationmaster, who previously worked as a loader at the state-owned Hellenic Railways, was transferred to an administrative job at the Education Ministry in 2011, when Greece’s creditors demanded staff cuts at the railways.
He returned to the company in June 2022 and was appointed station master at Larissa, a major rail hub, in January after five months of training.
Fire Service spokesman Vassilis Varthakoyiannis told media earlier that the collision sparked fires with temperatures so high, reaching 2,372 F (1,300 C), that it was “difficult to identify the people who were in it.”
Across the country, flags were flown at half mast on Friday during an official three-day period of national mourning.
At the universities, the protesters also covered the entrances of several universities with black sheets.
White roses were thrown on the tracks of the Larissa train station, Al Jazeera reported.
Police searched a railway coordination office in Larissa on Friday, removing evidence as part of an ongoing investigation.
The since-privatized train and freight operator, renamed Hellenic Train, is now owned by Italy’s Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane.