Mr. George Koutsopoulos is present at every court session in which the defendants in the Tempi tragedy are being tried. The elderly man from Karditsa sits in the same seat every time, holding a photograph of his grandson, Tasos, in his hands. On the evening of February 28, 2023, Tassos, who had gone to the village to help his father, was killed in the collision between the two trains. Nothing in his family’s life has been the same since then.
In recent days, his parents testified at the trial, describing the events of that fateful night and speaking emotionally about the loss of their child. “I want to talk about Tasos,” his mother said. As the testimonies of the relatives of the 57 deceased are concluded in the upcoming sessions, the accounts describe “their lives afterward”: after the tragedy, after the loss, after the struggle to bring the case before the courts. For these families, time is marked by the Tempi accident; it is measured in terms of “before” and “after” the accident.
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
In the period from the tragedy until today, most families have not spoken publicly. Most did not seek it; others found themselves caught up in a whirlwind of scenarios and allegations that made them feel accused and held accountable. The testimonies highlight the tragedy for each family individually. The mothers describe in great detail the last day they spent with their children, fathers recount how they quietly accompanied them to the train station, believing they had chosen the safest way to travel.
“I want to talk about Tasos. He was a truly remarkable child,” said Mrs. Vasiliki Koulpa, mother of Tasos Koutsopoulos, looking almost tearfully at the judges in the specially designed Gaipolis Hall at the University of Thessaly, where the trial began last March. “He wasn’t supposed to leave that day; he was supposed to leave the next day. He’d gotten a new cell phone and was showing it to me. ‘Come on, let’s take a picture,’ he said to me. I didn’t want him to leave, and I told him so,” she said. “We were packing his things. ‘Be careful,’ I told him. ‘What should I be careful about?’ ‘I’m taking the train.’ I went out onto the balcony and waved goodbye to him. I told him, ‘You forgot your water.’ ‘I’ll get some on the train,’ he told me. We spoke at 11:05. He told us the train was delayed. “Get some when you get there,” I told him. At 12:15, my son George called me. “You know, Tassos…” “What about Tasos?” I asked. “The train derailed,” he told me. We got in the car and headed to Larissa. We saw two or three ambulances and fire trucks. I told my husband, “Don’t rush—Tassos is gone.” We arrived at the scene. I was looking left and right, trying to find my Tassos. All around were children crying. We went back home; I went to Tasos’s room, took his pajamas, and stayed there…
We saw a closed casket. I want to see him; I want to dress him. They tell me it’s better if I don’t see him… From that moment on, I said I would fight until the end to see justice done. I couldn’t accept that Tassos’s death was instantaneous. I could feel it. Then the audio recordings came out. I listened to them and recognized Tassos’s voice. What mother wouldn’t recognize her son’s voice? I relived Tassos’s death, the tragedy, all over again.”
Almost four years after the tragedy, the families are still seeking answers. “I feel a sense of futility and resignation. I don’t want to say anything,” said Mr. Athanasios Karatheodorou, Nikitas’s father. “Nikitas was the kind of child everyone would want to have. He was an angel. We considered the train the safest mode of transportation. He called me to say he was coming. We waited for Nikitas, who never arrived. The gates of hell opened. I didn’t know if I was living through it or watching a movie. Chaos, confusion, endless phone calls. Even now, we don’t know what we were left with. Total destruction, they told us. It all happened in a fraction of a second. The boy didn’t understand a thing. But is that really the case? That’s where the need arises to find out what this fireball was that caused so much damage. It’s one thing to lose your son in the line of duty—he was in the Fire Department. That would make sense. It’s one thing to die in the line of duty and quite another to be lost like this. It makes no sense. We can’t bear to watch it. All these people were lost because the entire system known as the Greek railway was rotten to the core. It was only a matter of time before this happened. They didn’t have the excuse of “I didn’t know.” Now we feel like spectators watching life pass us by. We can no longer feel joy.”
The parents of the two train engineers involved in the freight train derailment—Dimitris Massalis and Spyros Voulgaris—have had to bear a second burden on top of the loss of their children. As rumors swirled about illegal cargo, contraband, and smuggling, they saw the photographs of their children at the memorial at the site of the tragedy torn to pieces; they were expelled from a gathering of relatives because, as they were told, there were “conflicting interests.” In fact, the mention of this specific incident caused tension in the courtroom, since Antonis Psaropoulos, the ex-husband of Maria Karystianou and father of Martha, who “went missing” that night, did not deny the fact but argued that it was done to protect the families of the two train drivers. “We retrieved our children unharmed and unburned. If they had been carrying an illegal cargo that caused the fireball, they would have been the first to burn,” stated members of the Voulgaris and Massalis families. The engineers of the freight train had tried to bring the train to a stop but were caught off guard by the sudden braking.
Agapi Tsaklidi’s father will always be tormented by one question. “The document (ed.: death certificate) stated ‘total charring.’ We weren’t allowed to see the body. The question is why we weren’t able to. We don’t know if she survived the crash and died afterward. We’ve become detectives trying to find answers,” said Mr. George Tsaklidis. He also referred to the cleanup of the accident site, saying that evidence was lost “that could have helped explain the fireball,” and, in any case, he remains unconvinced by the explanations that have been provided.
Each relative’s testimony unfolds a different story, yet all lead to the same conclusion. People who had nothing in common until the evening of February 28, 2023, found themselves on the same route that was to be the last of their lives. For Athina Katsara, the daughter of Evangelia Babarakou, the journey was a trip with her husband. The couple had a little boy just two years old when his mother was lost. “My daughter was newly married. She decided to take a trip to Athens with my son-in-law. Before they returned that evening, we spoke at 10:30 p.m. A relative called me at midnight to tell us that the train had caught fire. We went to Larissa to pick up the children. At some point, my son found my son-in-law on a stretcher. We could see the ambulances unloading black body bags. I couldn’t believe my child was in there.
The next day I went to the scene and saw the machinery. I started screaming and wailing, asking if my child was there. A few days later, they told us she was dead. Her funeral took place. Our lives are a living hell. Our whole lives revolve around this baby my daughter left behind. I’m both a mother and a grandmother to her. There’s nothing worse than having your child killed. I want everyone responsible for the death of my daughter and those 57 souls to be punished. “Be fair,” Mrs. Babaraku pleaded with the court.
Mr. Zisis Katsaras was traveling on the ill-fated train with his wife, Athina. “I realized the extent of the disaster,” he testified, “when we arrived at the University Hospital and saw parents searching for their children.” He himself had been injured. “The first few days in the hospital were a nightmare. All I could see were flames and smoke, and all I could hear were ambulances. On March 3, two hours before the funeral, they told me that Athinoula had ‘passed away’. Not being able to give my wife one last kiss. After that, my mind was constantly on my child… Tell me, my child is asking me for his mother… I want the knife to go right to the bone. Let them be punished. It will be a moral satisfaction for us. I know that in 2023, two trains were on the same track. They turned our homes into cemeteries.
My wife was sitting by the window, I was next to her, and Anastasia was sitting diagonally across from us. I remember Mr. Plakias’s daughters; they were heading toward the cafeteria. Mr. Koutsopoulos’s son, Tasos, was next to me. I realized I’d been hit really hard somewhere.”
Mrs. Anna Karatzoglou is the mother of Kelly Porfyridou. “My child is dead; I’m here, and those responsible are at home,” she testified before her voice broke with sobs as she stood at the witness stand. “She always had a smile on her face. During that time, I saw her as happy,” she said of her daughter. “The last time I spoke with my child was when she boarded the train. There were a lot of delays.”
A few days after the tragedy, Kelly’s body was identified. “They told us not to open the coffins. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to my child. I didn’t even get to kiss her—not even in death, for God’s sake. And they deprived me of that too,” she said, crying.
Angeliki Georgaki was aboard the ill-fated passenger train. “I was in seat 101 in the fifth car. It was on the left side by the window. There was a long delay at the Paliofarsalos station. The train was traveling at high speed. After Larissa, there was a deafening sound, as if a bomb had exploded. “I fell down and hit my knee,” he described. “The train had veered toward my side. I realized it had derailed. I got up and went toward the aisle. As soon as I reached the aisle, I heard a girl shouting, ‘Fire, fire!’ I walked toward the aisle, looked out the window on the street side, and saw the fire outside the car. It was spreading toward the front cars. I called my mother and told her to call the fire department. Panic had set in. There was no one to tell us what to do. Some people, keeping their cool, tried to open the door. A young passenger broke the window; because of the fire, the air had become suffocating. The door opened. A line formed, and we got off on the left side through the rear door. We walked a few meters toward the tunnel; you could see the train as if it were entering a ring of fire. At that moment, I was afraid it would explode…,” he described.
“I’m not here to talk about my own pain. We’re here so I can talk about my Francesca,” said Ms. Fotini Kokkala in her testimony. “She was a joyful, radiant soul with a sensitive nature. Our home had become a graveyard. It was filled with her singing and her presence. I begged to find my daughter, even if she were seriously injured in the hospital. From the moment I learned of her death, my life was divided into before and after. She was in the cafeteria. My daughter survived the crash, and if it hadn’t been for the fire, she would be alive today. You can hear her screaming. And even as she was fighting for her life, she found the strength to express her love for her best friend. Our children went through hell. If it weren’t for the fire, my daughter would be alive today. That thought kills me every day. What was it that burned our children? What caused the fireball?”
Mr. George Karakostas, who lost his wife, Vaia Bleka, in Tempi, paused many times while testifying, as he could not hold back his tears. His wife was planning to travel to the United States to meet him. “I want justice to be served without any compromises. The railroad line had no monitoring system. We would send a train and had no idea where it was.” Mr. Karakostas, who is an aircraft engineer, was questioned by a defense attorney and stated that a fireball cannot be caused by hydraulic fluids.
“I’ve come to ask you to seek justice for my son. He wanted to move forward with his life, but for us, everything has changed. Nothing is the same. Not even our Sunday dinner. We demand that the truth come to light and that all those responsible be punished,” said Maria Natsoura, mother of Sotiris Karageorgiou. “I lost my child, and others have lost theirs. People who are injured are suffering. Gerasimos is suffering. I am calling for exemplary punishment for all those involved. Punish them in a way that sets an example. They did not follow the rules. Only then will it have any meaning,” she said.
Gerasimos Georgiadis is the sole surviving passenger from the first car. The testimony of his father, Dionysis, left the courtroom in Larissa in stunned silence. “If Gerasimos is so determined not to give up, then as his father, I am obligated to fight to ensure that those responsible are punished and that this never happens again,” said Mr. Georgiadis, while describing the ordeal endured by his child and his family. “The doctors in Boston told us that, despite the devastation, there may be traces of consciousness, based on tests they conducted, as he reacted to his brother’s voice. Gerasimos wants so badly to live. The doctors themselves say they’re amazed he’s made it this far. Throughout this ordeal, we slept in a chair for eight months. I prayed that the door wouldn’t open. They told me my son’s condition is irreversible. “I’m sure Gerasimos understands.” Once the relatives of the deceased have finished giving their testimony, expert witnesses are expected to begin testifying.
Source: protothema.gr
