The prosecutor backed an expert examination of the station master’s phone, while 13 relatives of victims are due to testify today

The trial over the Tempi rail disaster enters its fourth week of testimony from victims’ relatives. According to the schedule of the Larissa Three-Member Court of Appeal for Felonies, 13 witnesses are expected to give evidence today. Meanwhile, three requests submitted by the lawyers supporting the prosecution remain pending.

Two of the requests concern forensic examination of the mobile phones of the defendant night-shift station master and of the late assistant driver of the passenger train, Nikolaos Nalbantis. The third asks for Adonis Georgiadis and Dimitris Markopoulos to be summoned as witnesses.

As the lawyer for the Nalbantis family, Othonas Papadopoulos, told the court, the family’s request regarding Mr Georgiadis relates to the latter’s public statement a few days after Tempi. He had said that, had the then transport minister, Kostas Achilleas Karamanlis, declared there was a safety problem on the railways, nobody would have boarded the trains. The request to summon Mr Markopoulos relates to his role as chair of the parliamentary inquiry committee into the rail disaster.

The request concerning Mr Nalbantis’s phone relates specifically to his work phone, which police handed to his fiancée after the disaster. It seeks to establish whether he used it to try to contact the station master, or anyone else, after the passenger train left Larissa railway station on the evening of 28 February.

A similar request was submitted by lawyers supporting the prosecution regarding the station master’s phone, which was seized after the disaster. It seeks to establish whether any attempt was made to contact the train driver, Georgios Koutsoumpas.

The prosecutor had proposed accepting the request concerning the station master’s phone. Specifically, she proposed lifting the confidentiality of communications and carrying out a laboratory examination of the device, covering incoming and outgoing calls, incoming and outgoing SMS and MMS messages, and incoming and outgoing data on applications such as Viber. If deleted files are found, an attempt would be made to recover them.

The lawyers supporting the prosecution agreed with the prosecutor’s proposal, as did the station master’s defence lawyer, Stefanos Pantzartzidis.

The presiding judge noted last week that an effort would be made to reach a decision on the request at today’s session. For the two new requests, the prosecutor’s proposal is awaited first.

It is worth recalling that 36 current and former officials of Greek railway bodies are accused over the fatal disaster at Tempi, including OSE, ERGOSE, Hellenic Train, RAS and the Transport Ministry. Thirty-three of the 36 are charged with dangerous interference with rail transport with possible intent, through acts dangerous to transport safety that could create a common danger to property belonging to others and a danger to people. The alleged result was (a) the deaths of a large number of people, (b) serious bodily harm to several others and (c) significant damage to public utility installations, committed repeatedly and jointly. The offence carries a sentence of up to life imprisonment.