The Greek state has announced that it will team up with the prosecution in the trial over the 2023 Tempe train collision, a significant development that lawyers on both sides described as a turning point in one of Greece's most consequential criminal cases in recent memory.
By Lia Kontopoulou
The declaration will be submitted at the next hearing scheduled for April 27, when proceedings resume at the Gaiopolis conference center.
The third session of the trial unfolded without the tensions that marked its two stormy predecessors, with a smaller attendance reflecting a court order limiting Monday's session to victims' relatives and survivors who had not yet completed their formal registration as civil parties.
Only three of the 36 defendants appeared in the dock, prompting defense attorney Zoe Konstantopoulou to demand the court compel all accused to attend in person.
"This trial has wounded an entire society," Mrs. Konstantopoulou said. "Their absence is not morally, humanly or historically acceptable."
She also renewed a call for televised coverage of the proceedings.
Forty-nine bar associations and the national union of railway traction staff also registered to support the prosecution.
Among those who addressed the court was the mother of military officer Elena Dourmika, who died aboard the passenger train while returning from an official trip to Athens.
Visibly distressed, she told the judges: "I implore justice to punish those responsible for the death of my child."
Mrs. Dourmika's husband demanded all defendants be physically present, adding that his children lost their mother because she was required to travel to Athens in person for duty.
Lawyers representing the family of Gerasimos Georgiadis — a survivor who has remained in a coma for three years — told the court his condition constituted "an ongoing crime." Attorney Othon Papadopoulos said: "He is neither in heaven nor on earth."
The Tempe disaster, in which two trains collided head-on in February 2023, killed 57 people and remains Greece's deadliest rail accident.