The trial over the Tempi rail disaster is entering its fourth week of testimony from victims’ relatives, with attention turning to requests for further examination of mobile phones linked to the events before the collision.
According to the schedule of the Three-Member Court of Appeal for Felonies in Larissa, 13 witnesses are expected to testify on Tuesday. Three requests submitted by lawyers supporting the prosecution remain pending.
Requests for phone examinations
Two of the requests concern expert examinations of the mobile phones belonging to the accused night-shift stationmaster and the late assistant driver of the passenger train, Nikolaos Nalbantis.
The request concerning Nalbantis relates specifically to his work phone, which was returned by police to his fiancée after the disaster.
His family is seeking to establish whether he attempted to contact the stationmaster or anyone else after the passenger train departed Larissa railway station on the night of 28 February.
A similar request has been submitted concerning the stationmaster’s phone, which was seized following the disaster. Lawyers want to determine whether there was any attempt to communicate with the passenger train’s driver, Georgios Koutsoumbas.
Prosecutor supports examination of stationmaster’s phone
The prosecutor has recommended accepting the request concerning the stationmaster’s mobile phone.
Specifically, she proposed lifting communications confidentiality and conducting a forensic examination of the device, covering incoming and outgoing calls, SMS and MMS messages, and incoming and outgoing data through applications such as Viber.
If deleted files are identified, an attempt should also be made to recover them.
Lawyers supporting the prosecution backed the prosecutor’s recommendation, as did the stationmaster’s defence lawyer, Stefanos Pantzartzidis.
The court president said last week that an effort would be made to issue a decision on the request at Tuesday’s hearing. The prosecutor’s recommendations are expected first on the two newer requests.
Political figures sought as witnesses
The third pending request concerns calls for Adonis Georgiadis and Dimitris Markopoulos to testify as witnesses.
Lawyer Othonas Papadopoulos, representing the Nalbantis family, told the court that the request concerning Georgiadis relates to a public statement he made a few days after the Tempi disaster.
According to Papadopoulos, Georgiadis said that if then-Transport Minister Kostas Achilleas Karamanlis had publicly stated there was a safety problem with the trains, nobody would have used them.
The request to call Markopoulos relates to his role as chairman of the Greek Parliament’s investigative committee into the rail disaster.
36 defendants face charges
A total of 36 former and current officials from Greek railway organisations and the Transport Ministry are defendants in the case. They include officials connected with OSE, ERGOSE, Hellenic Train and the Regulatory Authority for Railways.
Of the 36 defendants, 33 are accused of dangerous interference with fixed-track transport with conditional intent, involving acts alleged to have endangered railway safety and created risks to property and human life.
The charges relate to conduct resulting in the deaths of a large number of people, serious bodily injury to others and significant damage to public utility infrastructure, allegedly committed jointly and repeatedly.
The specific felony offence carries a possible sentence of up to life imprisonment.
Source: ANA-MPA
