“Strange bedfellows” amongst the Parliament opposition, at least regarding the Tempi train collision, emerged on Wednesday when a heterodox “alliance” of 32 MPs signed a proposal for the creation of a preliminary Parliamentary committee submitted by the president of a group representing some of families of victims of the deadly rail disaster.
The proposal submitted by Maria Karystianou, among others, contains a charge of “high treason” against Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and 10 other office-holders for the two-train collision in late February 2023.
The petition, which calls for proposals calling for other committees of inquiry to be withdrawn, and for the one submitted by Karystianou to be tabled.
MPs who signed the latter were from former Parliament president Zoe Konstantopoulou’s left-leaning and anti-establishment “Plefsi Eleftherias”, the right-wing and Euroskeptic Elliniki Lysi (Greek Solution) party, former SYRIZA deputies that joined Stefanos Kasselakis’ new but still officially out-of-Parliament party, those hailing from the ultra-conservative and ultra-religious Niki party, as well as four former members of the “Spartans” party, another far-right grouping with strong connections to the outlawed Golden Dawn.
Konstantopoulou and Elliniki Lysi president and founder Kyriakos Velopoulos have been among the more vocal proponents of a scenario involving an illegal cargo carried aboard the freight train, which then ignited upon impact, caused a fireball, and contributed to deaths of people in the passenger train. This allegation was then combined with a supposed government “cover-up” afterwards in order to hide the existence of the illegal cargo.
Recent experts’ studies and video footage that emerged two years after the collision have cast significant doubts on the “illegal cargo” scenario.
