A Greek court has for the first time awarded compensation over a death in the 2023 Tempi train disaster, acknowledging the responsibility of the rail operators, Greece’s AMNA news agency reported on Saturday.
The Court of First Instance awarded a total of 800,000 euros (nearly AU $1,331,000) to the wife, children and sister of a ticket inspector who was among the 57 people who died in the crash on 28 February 2023.
The accident happened when a passenger train from Athens to Thessaloniki with more than 350 people on board collided head-on with a freight train near the central city of Larissa shortly before midnight.
The two trains had been travelling toward each other on the same track for 19 minutes without triggering any alarm system.
The court said the disaster was the fault of state rail infrastructure company OSE and its now-privatised former subsidiary Hellenic Train, AMNA reported.
Although the companies knew the automatic safety system was not working, they continued to operate trains “risking the health and lives of both passengers and railway staff”, AMNA reported the court as saying.
State-run OSE owns, maintains and operates Greece’s railway networks.
Private company Hellenic Train operates intercity passenger and freight trains on OSE tracks.
Formerly known as TrainOSE, it was privatised and sold off in 2017 to Italy’s Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane, when it was renamed Hellenic Train.
Protesters demand justice
In the immediate aftermath, the Tempi disaster was blamed on faulty equipment and human error, and the local station master was charged with negligent homicide.
More than 40,000 protesters turned out at rallies in Athens and the northern city of Thessaloniki last Sunday to demand justice for the victims and their families.
A recently leaked experts’ report funded by the victims’ families alleged the freight train was carrying an illegal and unreported cargo of explosive chemicals, which contributed to the high death toll.
Hellenic Train has denied there were explosive chemicals on board.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis – who initially said “everything” showed that the accident was caused by “human error” – said on Thursday that Hellenic Train should face legal sanctions if it were proved to have knowingly misled authorities about the cargo.
The Athens prosecutors’ office said on Thursday it had summoned Hellenic Train’s former CEO Maurizio Capotorto to answer charges that he may have given “false testimony” to a parliamentary investigative committee last year, local media reported.
The prosecutor’s office has not yet set a date for Capotorto to be questioned, the reports said.
He was succeeded as CEO in May by fellow Italian Roberto Rinaudo.