PUBLISHER''S NOTE:
I very grateful to 'Feedspot' for featuring the Charles Smith Blog in its top 20 list of Forensic Blogs - a distinction which I did not seek! There are currently almost 500 Blogs on its 'Forensic' list. 'Feedspot' plays an important role in helping people make the difficult choice as to which Blogs to subscribe to, among many categories, in a cyberspace where the number of Blogs is overwhelming. The list can be accessed at the link below. Thank you Feedspot!
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
https://bloggers.feedspot.com/forensic_blogs/
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "There is, then, a dangerous lack of trust in the judicial system. That is due in part to the impression that its independence has been compromised in the investigation of the Tempe disaster, both because of the slow-moving investigation and the refusal of the investigating magistrate to provide critical evidence to the lawyers of victim’s families, like videos of the freight train that curiously were “discovered” and leaked just a few weeks ago."
PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Christos Papadimitriou, the railways safety expert who chaired the probe by the National Organisation for the Investigation of Air and Railway Accidents and Transport Safety (EODASAΑM) told a news conference on 27 February, the eve of the demonstrations, that everything was done wrong after the crash, from not securing the scene of the accident to covering crucial evidence with earth, an action which he said could not possibly give the committee the full picture of the circumstances of the crash."
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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "In conclusion, it can be safely stated that the Greek railway sector suffered highly from the economic crises. However, the investigation team was non capable of finding any form of long-term strategical planning to revitalise the Greek railway sector after this period.”
That does not paint a pretty picture of the current or the previous government.
Nor does the finding that the huge fireball that resulted from the crash was caused by 2.5 tonnes of flammable liquid that cannot be identified, due to unidentified officials’ (the committee after dozens of interviews said it was unable to determine who gave the order) decision to turn he crash site into a landfill.
The report debunked the notion peddled by officials that train engine silicone oils after the crash sparked the huge fireball that claimed the lives of many of the victims.
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STORY: "A Matter of Justice, a Matter of Trust," by George Gilson, published by Tovima, on March 3, 2025. (George Gilson has worked as a reporter and news analyst for a variety of media outlets in Greece since 1998, covering politics, diplomacy, and church affairs. In 1996-1997 he served as the first press officer at the Ecumenical Patriarchate+…From 'To Vima' and "The Wall Street Journal."
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GIST: "The demonstrations marked the second anniversary of the national tragedy of the train disaster at Tempe, in which 57 people, mostly youths, including many returning to university in Thessaloniki, lost their lives
The social contract, most famously articulated by the great Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is in a democracy an unspoken agreement between the state and the citizenry.
It is the cornerstone of a constitutional democracy, in which the basic law enshrines the rights and duties of both sides.
It is the basis of citizens’ trust in their elected leaders and the branches of the state, without which democracy is inconceivable
The massive demonstrations in Athens – with an estimated attendance of nearly one million protesters an expert told ΤΟ ΒΗΜΑ while others have spoken of 800,000 – (and in over 350 cities in Greece and abroad), were the clearest indication that the social contract in this country has been broken.
The demonstrations marked the second anniversary of the national tragedy of the train disaster at Tempe, in which 57 people, mostly youths, including many returning to university in Thessaloniki, lost their lives.
The management of the crash site, in which much of the area was, inexplicably, quickly covered with dirt, and the handling of the affair by both the government and the judiciary, have created a pervasive popular conviction that both have shown complacency and have moved extremely slowly in investigating the causes of the crash.
The public is demanding that justice be meted out quickly, and for those responsible – including politicians – to be punished to the full extent of the law.
There is, then, a dangerous lack of trust in the judicial system. That is due in part to the impression that its independence has been compromised in the investigation of the Tempe disaster, both because of the slow-moving investigation and the refusal of the investigating magistrate to provide critical evidence to the lawyers of victim’s families, like videos of the freight train that curiously were “discovered” and leaked just a few weeks ago.
Belated expert report: ‘Everything was done wrong’
Christos Papadimitriou, the railways safety expert who chaired the probe by the National Organisation for the Investigation of Air and Railway Accidents and Transport Safety (EODASAΑM) told a news conference on 27 February, the eve of the demonstrations, that everything was done wrong after the crash, from not securing the scene of the accident to covering crucial evidence with earth, an action which he said could not possibly give the committee the full picture of the circumstances of the crash.
The report, which made clear that apportioning political responsibilities was not part of its remit, cited chronic ills in the Greek railway system and addressed the handling of the notorious contract 717, for the acquisition and instalment of telecontrol and railway signalling systems, which he said could have saved the lives of the 57 victims.
Railways’ deterioration not due just to economic crisis
“In conclusion, it can be safely stated that the Greek railway sector suffered highly from the economic crises. However, the investigation team was non capable of finding any form of long-term strategical planning to revitalise the Greek railway sector after this period.”
That does not paint a pretty picture of the current or the previous government.
Nor does the finding that the huge fireball that resulted from the crash was caused by 2.5 tonnes of flammable liquid that cannot be identified, due to unidentified officials’ (the committee after dozens of interviews said it was unable to determine who gave the order) decision to turn he crash site into a landfill.
The report debunked the notion peddled by officials that train engine silicone oils after the crash sparked the huge fireball that claimed the lives of many of the victims.
The ‘sinful’ railway safety contract, EU warning
The instalment of an ill-fated telecommand – railway signalling system on the Athens-Thessaloniki line could most likely have prevented the head-on collision of two trains moving on the same tracks in opposite directions for 12 whole minutes, Papadimitriou said.
The tender for the system was held and the contract, 717, signed with a consortium in 2014 (when ND’s Antonis Samaras was PM), underwent a series of revisions, became muddled in Greece’s labyrinthine bureaucracy, and the project was never completed – either under the SYRIZA government (2015-2019) or the current government (2019-)
On 16 December, 2024, the European Commission sent the government a letter warning of its non-compliance with EU railway safety laws.
Parliament’s flawed initial probe, shielding Triantopoulos
There is a lack of trust, too, in Parliament’s handling of the affair, with the New Democracy majority in an inquiry panel blocking subpoenas of key witnesses, such as Minister-to-the-Prime Minister Christos Triantopoulos.
Entrusted by the PM to oversee on the ground the efforts to gather crucial evidence in the first days after the crash, he is said to have be the person who ordered the covering of the site, containing the remains of a number of victims and crucial chemical evidence, with earth. Triantopoulos denies he gave the order and the earth was later removed.
In an interview with private Alpha TV a month ago, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis conceded, with a touch of understatement, that the proceedings of the committee were “not Parliament’s finest moment”.
Two years after the fact, he proclaimed he is “the person who is the most eager to learn the truth”, with the exception of victim’s families.
Yet, the PM has taken care to keep all political figures directly or tangentially involved in the crash out of the firing line, especially the then competent transport minister Kostas Karamanlis (the nephew of ND founder Constantine Karamanlis, who resigned but a few months later was placed by the PM on the ND ticket in the general elections.
The name is still sacrosanct in the party and the PM would surely not have wanted to open a front with its Karamanlis wing, such as it is, even though the decision to keep Karamanlis on the ticket straight on the heels of the disaster cultivated in the public a sense that impunity is tolerated in the party.
Fending off rampant cover-up charges
In the last two years, the PM and New Democracy cadres have employed a number of lines of defence against rampant charges of a cover-up.
He has charged that opposition parties have detestably been attempting to instrumentalise a national tragedy for petty partisan gain.
He has said that the aim of his critics – in the opposition and the public – is to topple his government and destabilise the country.
The government has attributed blame for the crash to human error – firstly to the Larissa station chief who assumed his duties (which require a year-and-a-half of training according to the experts’ committee) less than one month before the crash (allegedly as a political favour) and had no supervisor on the night of the crash.
And secondly, to the driver of the passenger train, who died in the crash and hence cannot explain the course of events.
Polls show crash at top of citizens’ concerns
In a Pulse poll conducted for private SKAI television, 66 percent of respondents said that little or very little is being done to investigate the crash, and consequently to attribute blame where it is due.
A whopping 82 percent said the Tempe affair is for them the most important or one of the most important issues for them now.
Still, according to the most recent polls (before the demonstrations) ND holds a ten percentage point lead over main opposition PASOK.
The pitiful state of Greece’s railway system – which is by all accounts (including the experts’ report) decrepit, understaffed, and without necessary training, despite major funding from the European Union – raises a pivotal issue: How has railway security funding, including huge sums from the EU, been managed?
Where’s the money?
Since the 1980’s, when European Community funding started pouring in, approximately 15bn euros have been earmarked for the Greek railway system, including infrastructure, Thanasis Ziliaskopoulos – the president and CEO of TRAINOSE (now the privatised, Italian-owned Hellenic Trains) between 2010-2015 – told The Toc website in a March, 2023 interview.
“If that money had been spent properly, we would have had one of the best railway systems in Europe, and we didn’t even need all that money, because Greece is a small country,” Ziliaskopoulos said.
Hence, the obvious question is, “Where did all that money go?”
Were tenders held by OSE (the Greek Railways Organisation) and its subsidiaries TRAINOSE and ERGOSE for procurement contracts handled with full transparency by top managers?
Two weeks after the crash, the head of Greece’s Authority to Combat Money Laundering, former deputy Supreme Court prosecutor Charalambos Vourliotis ordered a sweeping investigation, covering the last 15 years, into the assets (real estate, bank accounts, etc.) of dozens of individuals who have held managerial positions in OSE, its subsidiaries TRAINOSE (now the Italian-owned Hellenic Trains) and ERGOSE, as well as of those procurers and others who have signed contracts with these companies.
In the ensuing two years, there have been no announcements by the Authority on the course of the investigation or on the prosecution of any individual or company.
Today, we are confronted with a 21st century railway system the safety of which relies exclusively on the human factor, and a situation in which a major tragedy and a great loss of life can nonchalantly be attributed to human error.
What has the current government done to upgrade the security of Greek railways both in the nearly three years before the Tempe disaster, and since then?
In an interview with private MEGA TV, EODASAΑM’s Christos Papadimitriou summed up Greece’s railway safety conundrum perfectly with a question.
“Would you ever travel on an aeroplane from an airport with heavy traffic if you knew that the air traffic controller who would manage your flight was working alone, with less than a month on the job?”
Whom can one trust to make sure that such a national disaster can never happen again, when the credibility of the entire political system has been put in question by the public?
The social contract now appears to be in tatters, but one may hope that it is not beyond repair, and that the Tempe tragedy may be a lesson to all."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.tovima.com/opinions/a-matter-of-justice-a-matter-of-trust/
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am grateful to 'Authory' a valuable service which creates a portfolio of all of my posts since I fired my first post into the cybersphere on the Charles Smith Blog on September 29, 2007, some 17 years ago. Today's post is number 11, 784 Yikes! Yes, this is a compulsion, but it's a healthy one ! One of the best features of 'Authory' (which I am trying out on the Blog for the first time, is a search engine for the portfolio which makes it easier for readers to follow the many important cases, issues and developments (and occasional rants) in the area of flawed pathology, flawed pathologists, and whatever else might cross my mind in jurisdictions throughout the world which are at the heart of the Blog. So, dear reader, you can access the portfolio at the following link. Just type the inquiry into the search box at the following link, and hit enter. (The search box is on the top write side of the page under 'Read more.' Why not try it out, and, as encouraging use of this search function by my readers is rather new to me, any feedback on how it is working would be appreciated at: hlevy15@gmail.com. Cheers!
https://authory.com/HaroldLevy
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
