Panos Ruci, the father of one of the 57 victims of the Tempi train crash in 2023, ended a hunger strike after twenty-three days following a relevant prosecutorial order allowing the exhumation of his son’s body and a toxicology test.
Zoe Konstantopoulou, lawyer for Panos Ruci and the leader of the left Plefsi Eleftherias party, spoke of vindication after the decision by the judicial authorities on Tuesday.
“Today, it is proven that light can defeat darkness. It is also proven that one person—with the strength of their soul, and with the support of their loved ones and of society as a whole, with justice entirely on their side—can overcome even the harshest and most ruthless mechanisms,” Konstantopoulou said at Syntagma Square in front of the Greek Parliament, where Ruci had camped out and refused to eat for nearly a month.
“It has been proven that Panos’s struggle has prevailed,” she added. “Today, it is unmistakably confirmed that the attempts at obfuscation, cover-up, and manipulation to bury the truth deep down did not prevail. Investigations are now being reopened; complaints and lawsuits from relatives are being retrieved from archives; and documents and evidence concerning the causes of the fireball, the causes of death, and the reasons behind the tragic loss of lives in Tempi are being brought out of the drawers.”
She continued: “What has been ordered today, following the prosecutor’s directive, shows that the mechanisms had resisted what was just and right. A 3,000-page case file has been ordered to be reopened—one that concerns the omissions of coroners, responsible officials, and expert witnesses.”
In 2023, a head-on collision between a passenger train and a freight train near Tempi in central Greece, in the Thessaly region, claimed the lives of fifty-seven people, mainly university students.
The accident was the deadliest railway disaster in Greece, leading to acrimonious political bickering, with public opinion demanding the culprits face harsh justice. The country’s then transport minister Achilleas Karamanlis was forced to step down due to massive public outcry and intense political pressure from opposition parties. However, to this day, no one has been legally charged with any crimes, fueling the Greek public’s mistrust toward the country’s government and judicial authorities.
