Panos Ruci, the father of a victim of Greece’s Tempi train disaster, has announced a public gathering at Syntagma Square in Athens on Tuesday evening at 6 p.m., to thank those who supported him during his 23-day hunger strike.
Routsis ended his strike after authorities in Larissa agreed to exhume his son Dennis’s body and conduct toxicological and biochemical tests, along with allowing families to appoint independent technical experts to oversee the process.
People chant while sitting in front of the Greek parliament during a solidarity protest to support hunger striker Panos Routsi, who lost his son Dennis in the deadly Tempi train crash in 2023, on his 14th day without food to demand permission to exhume his son’s body for toxicological tests to determine the cause of his death, in Athens, Greece, September 28, 2025. REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki
Despite his fragile health, Ruci remains at his small encampment outside the Greek Parliament, where he spent weeks demanding full transparency over the circumstances of his son’s death. An ambulance remains stationed nearby as a precaution.
The prosecutor’s decision marks a major shift in the handling of the Tempi case, which had previously been treated as a simple traffic accident, limiting forensic examinations to the train drivers. Families of victims have long pressed for broader testing to determine whether their loved ones died from the impact or the subsequent fire.
Ruci’s protest and its outcome have been widely viewed as a symbolic victory for victims’ families, highlighting public frustration over how the deadly 2023 crash was investigated.
After Tuesday’s gathering, Ruci is expected to leave Syntagma Square and return home, having achieved what he has long described as “justice for my child.”
