A long-awaited trial into Greece’s worst train tragedy was adjourned to April 1 after starting on Monday amid chaotic scenes in a courtroom too small to handle the huge interest in the case, officials said.
Hundreds of people turned up for the trial into the 2023 train collision that left 57 dead, leading to angry complaints from lawyers that the venue was “insultingly” unsuitable, and booing from family relatives.
A prominent member of the association of victims’ families, Maria Karystianou, told reporters that relatives had been “packed like sardines”.
She said it was “an absolute disgrace and contempt” towards victims’ families.
Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis insisted that the venue chosen, a remodelled university lecture hall in the central city of Larissa, was one of the two biggest courtrooms in Greece.
Marinakis told reporters that the hall had seating for over 460 people and blamed the issue on a higher-than-expected number of observers.
Thirty-six people face charges and over 350 witnesses are due to be heard at the trial.
It is being conducted around 30 kilometres (nearly 20 miles) from the spot near Tempe, central Greece, where a freight train and a passenger train smashed into each other on February 28, 2023.
Among those to testify are survivors and family members of the victims, some of whom are believed to have burned to death after surviving the initial collision.
Most of the dead were students returning from a carnival weekend.
“This trial is starting with great delay… What we want is exemplary punishment of those responsible,” Pavlos Aslanidis, whose 26-year-old son died in the accident and who heads the Association of Victims’ Families, told reporters before the start of the trial.
– ‘Burned alive’ –
Karystianou, a paediatrician who led the association for years, and is now planning to launch a political party, said no investigation was carried out into how her daughter “burned alive”.
She called the trial “stunted”.
“We want the truth to come out,” she said outside court on Monday.
The accused include the station master on duty on the night of the accident, other railway officials and two Italian former employees of the trains’ parent company, Ferrovie dello Stato.
The two trains had run on the same track for more than 10 minutes without triggering an alarm.
The head-on collision exposed the parlous state of the Greek railway network’s safety precautions — despite European Union grants for their modernisation and repeated warnings from unions.
“This trial clearly demonstrates all the corruption of the Greek state, the corruption that killed our children,” Christos Vlahos, a parent of one of the victims said outside court.
The trial is expected to last several years.
Thirty-three of the defendants face criminal charges and risk prison sentences of up to life imprisonment.
None of the accused are currently in prison, although some have served time in pre-trial detention.
The head of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, Laura Kovesi, said the collision could have been avoided if the signalling system had been modernised in time using EU funds.
Train workers were staging a 24-hour strike on Monday in what their union called “an act of collective remembrance, protest and democratic vigilance”.
– ‘Killed our people’ –
The accident – now commonly known as the “Tempe crime” — sparked widespread anger that has never subsided.
Tens of thousands of people joined protests nationwide to mark the accident’s third anniversary last month.
The accused include the duty station master, Vassilios Samaras, who was arrested the day after the collision, and two other station masters who had left their posts before the end of their shift.
They are accused of having committed “acts dangerous to the safety of railway traffic… resulting in the death of a large number of people and serious bodily injuries to a large number of people,” according to the indictment seen by AFP.
Managers and employees of the Hellenic Railways Organisation (OSE), the rail network operator, are also on trial, as well as two senior transport ministry officials and two Italian executives from Hellenic Train, a subsidiary of the Italian state’s Ferrovie dello Stato.
No political official will be in the dock.
This has fuelled resentment at a time when the conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is already facing fierce criticism for what is widely seen as a disastrous handling of the accident.
There are also claims by the opposition and civil society that officials are shielding those responsible.
Communist party leader Dimitris Koutsoumbas told reporters on Monday the investigation was closed “hurriedly”, leaving “huge gaps” in the case.
He called it a “blatant cover-up”.
Two former ministers, including ex-transport minister Kostas Karamanlis were also referred to justice by parliament but face only misdemeanour charges at present.
“There are people who should be here as defendants, such as Kostas Karamanlis, who killed our people,” said Aslanidis.
Valuable evidence was also lost when, just days after the collision, a bulldozer levelled the site.
Despite the disaster, Mitsotakis comfortably won re-election just months later and went on to defeat two parliamentary votes of no-confidence on the issue.