Three defendants are expected to appear today, Wednesday, before the Single-Member Misdemeanor Court of Larissa regarding the management of video material in the case of the Tempe train crash. The defendants include two former OSE executives and the legal representative of Interstar Security (the company that has been responsible for the security and video surveillance of the OSE railway network since 2017), following a postponement they had received. Originally, the hearing was scheduled for last June, but the court granted the postponement request made by the defendants’ side due to conflicts of their defense attorneys for the former managing director of OSE.
It should be noted that the main axis of the charges is structured around two time periods and concerns, on one hand, the failure to send video material from the Thessaloniki Freight Station to investigating magistrate Sotiris Bakaimes in the summer of 2023 – from the night of February 28th – and, on the other hand, the failure to preserve this specific material, resulting in new data being allowed to be recorded on the digital hard drive during the first critical months after the accident.
Tempe: Zoe Konstantopoulou present at video evidence trial – Kyriakos Velopoulos testifies as prosecution witness
It is noted that Zoe Konstantopoulou will be present this morning at the Single-Member Misdemeanor Court of Larissa, “for the first trial concerning the misappropriation and disappearance of video material depicting the loading of the freight train involved in the Tempe railway tragedy on February 28, 2023,” according to an announcement from Course of Freedom.
The party’s press office notes that Ms. Konstantopoulou, “as legal counsel for victims’ families, will be present in the courtroom to highlight who and why concealed, withheld, misappropriated or destroyed the videos of the freight train loading, material that to this day has not been submitted to any authority” and that “in the defendant’s dock will be: The Managing Director of OSE, charged with moral complicity in document misappropriation and continuous disobedience, the former President of OSE, for moral complicity in document misappropriation, and an Interstar executive, for document misappropriation and continuous disobedience.”
Additionally, the president of Greek Solution, Kyriakos Velopoulos, is expected to appear at the Larissa Courts to testify as a prosecution witness in the trial concerning the case of the “vanished videos,” as he maintains, from the freight train involved in the deadly Tempe accident.
According to the announcement from the Greek Solution Press Office, the case concerns the criminal complaint filed by Mr. Velopoulos regarding the disputed videos, which he believes contain critical evidence for investigating the circumstances of the accident.
The trial is being heard following a postponement, which – according to the announcement – key defendants and their attorneys had “achieved.”
The Greek Solution faction emphasizes that their president’s presence at the Larissa Courts confirms their consistent stance in favor of revealing the truth about the tragic Tempe accident that shocked the country.
Tempe: Prosecution charges filed for video material case by Supreme Court prosecutor’s office
As reported by onlarissa.gr, the case essentially begins in early autumn 2024 when it was discovered that video material from the Thessaloniki Freight Station had not been sent. This news activated the reflexes of the then Supreme Court prosecutor, Georgia Adeilini, who in November ordered a preliminary investigation to “investigate why the material from the Thessaloniki railway station cameras, delivered by those responsible for their management company to the appellate investigator of the Tempe case (following his request for the delivery of video material from Thessaloniki railway station, which might have recorded the loading and departure of the freight train involved in the accident on the night of February 28, 2023), did not contain video recordings from the Thessaloniki engine depot, where the freight train loading took place.”
The result of this preliminary investigation was the filing of criminal charges by the Larissa First Instance Prosecutor’s Office against the Interstar executive for the misdemeanors of continuous document misappropriation and disobedience, against the former OSE managing director (March 2023 – August 2025) for the crimes of moral complicity in single and continuous document misappropriation and moral complicity in disobedience, and against the former OSE president (October 2020 – March 2023) for moral complicity in document misappropriation.
As described in the indictment for the Interstar executive, “although he had the ability according to articles 8 par.3 and 9 par.3 of Directive 1/2011 of the Personal Data Protection Authority, to preserve for a period of three (3) months and transmit to the competent judicial, prosecutorial and police authorities, respectively, among others, the video material in which the loading and departure of freight train No. 63503 from Thessaloniki Freight Station was recorded, acting with intent, he did not perform the above actions, but, on the contrary, allowed, more than once, the recording of new data on the digital hard drive on which the aforementioned disputed video material had been recorded, an action that resulted in the deletion of the latter.”
Then in July 2023, when the appellate investigator requests the “sending of the digital hard drive or the medium on which the loading of freight train No. 63503 from Thessaloniki Railway Station on 28-2-2023 was recorded, in order to attempt recovery of the specific digital or other data –even if deleted– with an order to the competent Criminological Research Directorate,” the response comes in August with the sending of six digital hard drives.
These hard drives, however, as stated in the indictment, “concerned Thessaloniki Passenger Station, thus concealing the critical digital hard drive on which the loading of freight train No. 63503 on 28-2-2023 had been recorded.”
The moral complicity of OSE executives consists in the fact that through “persuasion, advice, encouragement, exhortations, persistence” and using their influence due to their capacity, position and relationship with the physical perpetrator, they intentionally caused the first defendant to proceed with the acts for which he was ultimately referred for trial.
