Greek Court Orders Probe Into Report on Train Crash Fireball
Source: Balkan Insight
Greece’s Supreme Court ordered a probe on Monday after the universities of Pisa and Ghent distanced themselves from a report by Greece’s National Aviation Investigation Agency and Railway Accidents and Transportation Safety Agency, EODASAAM, on the causes of the fire that erupted after a passenger and a freight train collided in 2023, killing 57 people.
The Supreme Court Prosecutor, Georgia Adeilini, called for an examination of EODASAAM’s investigation, published in February.
This concluded that the fireball erupting after the collision was caused by an unknown flammable material of at least 2.5 tons, allegedly carried by the commercial train and not related to the trains’ engines or their declared cargo.
The chapter on the fireball, which burned alive several victims after the crash, was based on conclusions attributed to experts from the Universities of Ghent and Pisa.
Adeilini said an investigation was needed “to verify ex officio prosecuted criminal acts, such as, for example, undue influence on judicial officers”. She also called for an examination of the role of the Independent Expert Investigation Committee, EDAPO, and the technical advisor to the families of the Tempi crash victims, Kostas Lakafosis.
Professor Gabriele Landucci, from the University of Pisa, in an email sent to EODASAAM in April, said the controversial chapter on the fireball had not been reviewed or authorised by Pisa University, adding: “You cannot report any reference to University of Pisa without any signed agreement”.
Meanwhile, Georgios Maragkos, of Ghent University, told Ellinika Hoaxes, a Greek fact-checking organisation, on Sunday that the Belgian university had never conducted any substantial research through simulation or experiment into the cause of the fireball.
He said it had only contributed by evaluating three preliminary CFD simulations. [Computational fluid dynamics is the science of using computers to predict liquid and gas flows.] “We certainly do not approve or support the conclusions presented and related to the CFD simulations in the EODASAAM report,” Maragkos pointed out.
EODASAAM’s president, Christos Papadimitriou, told Greece’s public broadcaster on Monday that the contested chapter on the fireball was written by two executives of the European Union Agency for Railways. “That was the conclusion of the committee; we could not change it,” he said.
He added that when they realised that there was no certification of the chapter from a higher university, they asked Bart Accou, Head of Unit, Safety and Operations at the European Union Agency for Railways, not to publish it.
Among other things, Papadimitriou also complained of receiving threats to his life, presumably over the report: “I have received threats, [but] not from domestic factors,” Papadimitriou said on Monday.
The original article: belongs to Balkan Insight .
