Protesters returned to the streets of Thessaloniki on Saturday amid public anger over the deadliest rail disaster in Greek history.
Days of demonstrations have taken place across the country in light of Tuesday’s crash, which killed at least 57 people, over a perceived lack of safety measures in the transport network.
The station manager involved is due to appear before a prosecutor and an investigating judge on Sunday after his dismissal was postponed a day earlier.
The 59-year-old is accused of placing two trains traveling in opposite directions on the same track, resulting in a passenger train crashing into a freighter late Tuesday in Tempe, 380 kilometers north of Athens.
The government has blamed human error, and the station manager faces multiple charges of negligent homicide and bodily harm, as well as interfering with transportation.
Stephanos Pantzartzidis, the station manager’s lawyer, told reporters waiting outside the courthouse on Saturday in the central Greek city of Larissa that “very important new evidence has emerged that forces us to request a postponement” of his client’s deposition.
The attorney did not elaborate. Under Greek law, authorities have not released the accused’s name.
On Saturday, one of the three members of an expert panel appointed by the government to investigate and issue a report on the collision resigned after opposition parties and some media panned his appointment.
Thanasis Ziliaskopoulos served as chairman and CEO of the country’s train operator from 2010 to 2015 and is currently chairman of the Greek agency responsible for privatizing state-owned assets.
Many of those killed were in their teens and 20s
Funerals for some of the people killed in the crash, many of them in their teens and 20s, took place in northern Greece. The force of the crash and the resulting fire complicated the task of identifying the victims, which is being done through DNA testing of relatives.
Some families have yet to receive the remains of their loved ones. Police said 54 victims have been positively identified.
The rally protesting the conditions that led to the tragedy continued on Saturday. A peaceful demonstration in central Athens organized by the youth wing of the Communist Party drew over a thousand people.
A demonstration organized by a railway workers’ union is planned for Sunday morning, also in Athens. The union, which is organizing rolling strikes, has asked the public to participate.
Greek media have published damning stories about the mismanagement and neglect of infrastructure in Greece’s railways.
A former head of the railway workers’ union, Panayotis Paraskevopoulos, told Greek newspaper Kathimerini that the signaling system in the area where the accident occurred broke down six years ago and was never repaired.
Station masters and train drivers communicate via two-way radio, and track switches are operated manually across parts of the main railway line from the capital Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki.
The station master, who previously worked as a porter at the state-owned Hellenic Railways, or OSE, was transferred to a desk job at the education ministry in 2011 when Greece’s creditors demanded railway staff cuts.
He moved back to the company in June 2022 and was appointed station manager in Larissa, a major railway hub, in January, after five months of training.
Police searched a railway coordination office in Larissa early Friday and removed evidence as part of an ongoing investigation.
The then-privatized train and freight operator, renamed Hellenic Train, is now owned by Italy’s Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane.