Hundreds of people gathered around Greece on Friday to demand justice for at least 57 people murdered in the country’s deadliest rail accident with some protestors describing the incident as “a crime”.
According to The Punch, the police and some protesters got into a fight as public outrage over the government’s role in the disaster intensified.
The station master in Larissa, central Greece, reportedly neglected to reroute one of the trains, which led to a passenger train traveling alongside an approaching freight train for several kilometers before colliding with it late Tuesday.
At least nine young people studying at Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University were among the deceased, and another 26 people were injured, as it was transporting numerous students returning from a vacation weekend.
The accident was attributed to “tragic human mistake,” according to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who is running for re-election this spring.
Nonetheless, demonstrations against alleged government mismanagement persisted on Friday in Greece’s capital city Athens and numerous other significant cities.
A 23-year-old student at Thessaloniki, Sofia, claimed that what had transpired was not an accident but rather a crime. “We cannot stand by and do nothing as this takes place.”
The catastrophe has led to harsh criticism of the government’s handling of the train system.
Thousands of people gathered outside the Hellenic Train offices in Athens to demonstrate against decades of inaction to improve train network safety, despite near-fatal incidents in the past. Hellenic Train assumed control of network operations in 2017.
Outside the Greek parliament, hundreds of people conducted a minute of silence in memory of the disaster’s victims.
Later on Friday, while a candlelight vigil was being held for the crash victims, riot police and a small number of protestors engaged in violence in central Athens.
According to an AFP correspondent, police shot tear gas and stun grenades at demonstrators throwing Molotov cocktails and stones during the march in Syntagma Square, which is close to the parliament, about 3000 people were present.
Similar number of people took to the streets in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, where police had previously recorded incidents involving protesters who had thrown rocks and petrol bombs.
On Friday, protests also took place in other Greek cities. According to police, 500 people rallied in the university town of Patros in the southwest Peloponnese, while another 700 people showed up in Larissa, the town closest to the tragedy site.
The survivors of the disaster described horrifying and chaotic sights. Several relatives were still anxiously awaiting word of lost family members.
According to the head coroner at the main hospital in Larissa, Roubini Leontari, more than 10 persons, including two Cypriots, are still missing.
Train workers in Greece went on strike on Thursday, claiming that the fatal crash was caused by the network’s poor management under previous administrations.
The strike has continued on Friday and is expected to last another 48 hours.
According to train unions, there have been safety issues on the Athens-Thessaloniki railway route for years.
Although the 59-year-old station master at Larissa has been accused of negligent homicide, his attorney contends that other circumstances were present.
On Saturday, the station master’s case is scheduled to be heard in court in Larissa. If proven guilty, he might spend his life in prison.
“My client has accepted his share of blame,” said attorney Stefanos Pantzartzidis on Thursday. Yet we can’t concentrate on a tree when there’s a forest around it.
According to ERT, the station master had only been in the position for 40 days and had only completed three months of training.
But, legal sources claimed that investigators were thinking of pressing charges against Hellenic Train management.
“During a search of the Larissa train station in central Greece, the scene of the catastrophe, police collected audio files and other things,” a judicial source told AFP.
“Greece’s 2,552-kilometer (1,585-mile) rail network has long been hampered by inadequate management, subpar maintenance, and outdated machinery.
A “full examination of the political system and the state” was promised by the country’s new transport minister, Giorgos Gerapetritis, after the departing official announced his resignation on Wednesday in the wake of the accident.
Five years after the state-owned Greek rail company TrainOSE was privatized and sold to Italy’s Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane and also changed its name to Hellenic Train, the safety systems on the line are still not entirely automated.
