Passenger account of the crash

The session opened with testimony from an injured passenger who had been travelling in the second carriage of the passenger train. He described a sudden braking, then a spinning sensation, and said he put his hands in front of his face before losing consciousness. He woke in a field after being thrown from the carriage, struggled to breathe and dragged himself away from the wreckage while other passengers panicked. He recalled the smell of burnt iron and plastic, and a dark smoke rising from a fire that spread through the middle of the wreckage. An ambulance took him to the University Hospital of Larissa, where doctors recorded injuries to his head and other parts of his body. Asked by the presiding judge, he said he could not remember any stop after the train left Larissa station.

Third-carriage witness

A passenger from the third carriage followed, having travelled with a woman who died in the crash. He said he heard a bang and his first thought was to find her, after which he and another passenger tried to move her toward a window that had broken while calling for help. He described a strong, unusual smell and smoke after the collision, and said the train stood for about ten minutes after leaving Larissa station, a stop the injured passenger could not recall. Asked by the lawyer for the family of the train's driver, who also died, he said he had not been called to testify by the appeals investigating judge Sotiris Bakaimis.

A father's death and the railway warnings

Fjorald Bozo, son of a 61-year-old man who worked at the buffet of the passenger train, insisted that his father fought for his life, noting that his hands were found in a boxer's stance. He told the court:

“My father was burning alive and I was sleeping.”

He said the memory would haunt him for the rest of his life, and he showed the court photographs of the fire. He could not accept the explanation that the fireball was caused by silicone oils, adding that he was no expert but asking why trains were still running if that were the cause. He presented warning documents describing track and infrastructure problems, delays, staff shortages and gaps in safety systems, including remote control, and said one letter warned of an incident of the highest severity. Reading the addressees, he named Spyros Pateras, then chairman and chief executive of OSE, who was in the courtroom, and asked why Kostas Ach. Karamanlis, then minister of infrastructure and transport, was not there. He said he had moved to Switzerland to protect his child, and when the presiding judge remarked that things do not work properly there either, he replied that in Switzerland trains derail but do not collide head-on.

Exhumation dispute

Zoe Konstantopoulou, lawyer for relatives of victims and one injured person, submitted correspondence covering the two months before the hearing between the Larissa misdemeanour prosecutor and forensic experts. The letters concern the choice of laboratory for the special tests that families have requested, and she told the court:

“There is a serious operation to overturn a useful investigation.”

She asked that every investigative act on the exhumations be carried out under the court's aegis, by its decision and order, and said she would develop the request at the next session. In the week of 12 October a new prosecutorial order had gone to the forensic experts to proceed with the Dutch laboratory selected for the tests and begin the exhumations immediately. Panos Routsi, father of a victim, objected in court to the order's reference to setting a cost for the tests, saying:

“When we hear that the prosecutor asks for a price list, it makes us wonder: what did we do wrong?”

Relatives and absent parents

Dimitris Kyriakidis, whose father was among the victims, said the loss had broken his family psychologically and that his father's absence was keenly felt. Biological material from his father was found about one and a half years after the crash at Koulouri and Pigadia, sites where train debris and soil from the collision had been moved. He said that when the remains were identified it felt like reliving the day he learned his father had died, and he asked for those responsible to be punished. The parents of a victim who was an architecture student did not testify, although scheduled for the day. Their lawyer said they had been unable to prepare to speak about their daughter, and reported that a charitable foundation in her name had been set up in the week of 12 October and would begin operating. The lawyer also said a named chair of artificial intelligence was planned at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and handed the panel an album of her artwork. The session was to continue with testimony from injured passengers and relatives.