A group representing the 57 victims of the head-on collision of two trains in Greece last February said Tuesday that it had filed a criminal lawsuit against Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and other ministers and officials ahead of Sunday’s national election.
“The lawsuit targets… the prime minister, ministers and ex-ministers” in addition to other officials, group representative Christos Konstantinidis, whose wife died in the country’s worst rail disaster, told reporters in the central city of Larissa.
A passenger train collided with a freight train shortly before midnight on February 28 after being mistakenly allowed to run on the same track.
Thirty of the 57 people killed were under 30 years old, many of them university students.
The disaster prompted tens of thousands of people to take to the streets to vent fury with the government, which for the last eight years has been led by the conservative Mitsotakis or his main rival, leftist Alexis Tsipras.
The former head of rail network company OSE, who was forced to resign after the tragedy, has already been prosecuted for breach of duty.
The stationmaster on duty during the crash is being held in pretrial detention on charges of endangering public transport and negligent homicide, facing up to a life sentence if convicted.
Three other railway officials — two other stationmasters and a shift supervisor — have also been charged in connection with the disaster.
The government drew fire after initially trying to place the blame squarely on the stationmaster on duty.
Railway unions had long been warning about safety risks, claiming the network was underfunded and understaffed after a decade of spending cuts, and prone to accidents.
Mitsotakis later apologised and vowed to improve rail safety in cooperation with EU experts and French rail operator SNCF.
Only parliament can investigate the prime minister and ministers.
Source: AFP