Court proceedings of the highly anticipated Tempi train crash will start from scratch after a local Larissa Misdemeanor judicial council accepted the recusal of a judge presiding over the Single-Member Misdemeanor Court regarding the case of the handling of surveillance footage linked to the 2023 train crash that claimed the lives of 57 people.

Now, a new judge will be appointed, and the trial linked to the management of the video material will commence afresh. The proceedings do not concern the causes of the crash, per se, but the handling of video footage from a freight train connected to the collision. More specifically, the trial focuses on the failure to deliver the footage to the competent investigating magistrate.

According to the indictment, footage from the Thessaloniki Freight Station was not submitted to the appellate investigating judge handling the main case into the crash. In the months following the disaster, new data was allegedly recorded over the original files on a digital hard drive.

When the material was eventually delivered to authorities in the summer of 2023, it was no longer possible to recover the original footage.

The development comes after 19 court sessions, during which the first three witnesses had already testified.

Meanwhile, the relatives of victims of the Tempi train disaster released a statement expressing their anger and frustration over the indefinite postponement and restart of the trial concerning the video material.

The Tempi Victims’ Relatives Association accused authorities of effectively “mutilating” the truth, while also leveling indirect criticisms of Zoe Konstantopoulou (one of the lawyers of the families) without naming her.