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ATHENS, Greece – The station master involved in Greece’s deadliest train crash is due to appear before a prosecutor and coroner on Sunday after his testimony on Saturday was postponed.
The 59-year-old is accused of having placed two opposing trains on the same track. At least 57 people died when a passenger train crashed into a freighter late Tuesday in Tempe, 380 kilometers north of Athens.
The government blames human error, and the station master faces multiple charges of involuntary manslaughter and bodily harm and obstructing traffic. Days of protests against the alleged lack of safety measures in the Greek rail network took place after the disaster.
Stephanos Pantzartzidis, the station master’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 postponement,” in his client’s testimony.
The lawyer didn’t elaborate. According to Greek law, the authorities have not published the name of the accused stationmaster.
Also on Saturday, one of the three members of an expert panel appointed by the government to investigate and draw up a report on the collision resigned after opposition parties and some media outlets planned his appointment.
Thanasis Ziliaskopoulos was Chairman and CEO of the country’s rail operator from 2010 to 2015 and is currently Chairman of Greece’s agency in charge of privatizing state assets.
Funerals for some of the people killed in the crash, many in their teens and 20s, were held in northern Greece. The force of the crash and a resulting fire have complicated identification of the victims, which is being done through DNA testing of next of kin.
Some families have yet to receive the remains of their loved ones. Police said 54 victims have been positively identified.
Rallies protesting the conditions that led to the tragedy continued on Saturday. A peaceful rally in central Athens organized by the Communist Party youth wing drew over a thousand people.
A rally organized by a railway union is also planned for Sunday morning in Athens. The union, which organizes ongoing labor strikes, has called on the public to participate.
Greek media have published damning reports of mismanagement and infrastructure neglect on Greece’s railways.
A former railway workers’ union chairman, Panayotis Paraskevopoulos, told the Greek newspaper Kathimerini that the signaling system in the area where the accident happened six years ago went down and was never repaired.
Station masters and train drivers communicate via radio and points are operated manually over parts of the main line from the capital Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki.
The stationmaster, who used to work as a porter at the state-owned Hellenic Railways (OSE), was transferred to a desk job at the education ministry in 2011 when Greece’s creditors called for staff cuts at the railways.
In June 2022 he returned to the company and in January, after five months of training, was appointed station master in Larissa, a major railway junction.
Police raided a railway coordination office in Larissa early Friday and removed evidence as part of an ongoing investigation.
The since-privatized rail and freight operator, renamed Hellenic Train, is now owned by Italy’s Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane.
Kantouris reported from Thessaloniki, Greece