Athens (EFE). – The station manager who is accused of a mistake that led to the head-on collision of two trains in Greece in which 47 people died, will testify this Thursday in a court in the city of Larisa.
The 59-year-old employee was arrested Wednesday and charged with “negligent homicide” and other crimes that can carry, if convicted, between ten years and life in prison.
According to the Greek media, the railway employee already admitted on Wednesday, after being arrested, his responsibility for the mistake that placed a passenger train with 342 passengers and 10 crew members on the same track as a freight train with two machinists.
According to these media, which cite police sources, the employee alleged fatigue due to the high workload. On the Greek public television ERT, the audio recording the moment in which the accused gave free rein to circulation through the wrong place has also been broadcast.
Firefighters search for survivors
Dozens of firefighters have continued their work to search for survivors, while the latest death toll has already risen to 47.
Another 57 people remain hospitalized, six of them in intensive care. Most of the victims were young university students returning to Thessaloniki after a festive long weekend.
The authorities have asked relatives of the travelers to provide DNA tests since many of the bodies recovered are so burned that they cannot be identified in any other way.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Wednesday that “the tragedy, unfortunately, is due above all to human error.”
The president of the train drivers’ union, Kostas Geridunias, denounced on ERT public television the state of deterioration of the railway line that connects the two largest cities in Greece.
“Nothing works, everything is done manually, we are in manual mode on the entire Athens Thessaloniki axis. Traffic lights don’t work either. If they did, drivers would see red lights and stop on time,” he noted.
For these reasons, train drivers depend almost entirely on the information they receive from station managers, without an automated system that alerts them to possible errors.
The railway workers’ union has called a 24-hour strike to protest the situation in the sector.
Greece’s railways, Hellenic Train, are operated by the Italian state company Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane. However, all other infrastructure – including security systems – is run by the state-owned Greek Railways Agency (OSE).