Sunday newspaper TO VIMA alleged on its front page that the audio recordings between the station master in Larissa and the driver of the passengers train taken on the night of the Tempi railway disaster were tampered before they were leaked to the media on March 1, 2023.
In a report headlined “The montage in Tempi casts new shadows on the tragedy,” the tovima.gr claimed that different recordings between railway employees were stitched together so as to give the impression that the disaster, which claimed the lives of 57 people, was the result of human error on the part of the Larissa station master.
“From a document of the Forensic Laboratories it appears that the 4 phrases are a stitch of two consecutive conversations of the station master (audio files “CH103e3” & “Ch103e4″) with two train drivers and not one.”
Worth noting that the audio recordings are released on March 1, less than 12 hours after the fatal crash short before midnight February 28.that cost the lived of 57 people
To make the long report short, here are the highlights:
1) On March 1, 2023, just a few hours after the crime in Tempi, numerous audio recordings of the fateful night are leaked to the pro-government media and presented as “evidence” of the government’s line of human error.
2) One of these communication exchanges between the driver and the stationmaster is the meanwhile famous:
- “Vassilis, am I leaving?
- “You’re leaving!”
A few days later, a report by state broadcaster ERT, mentioned that something is wrong with this audio and it probably concerns other routes that had taken place on the same day. The news is leaked and no one is then concerned about how it is possible for so many audio recordings to be leaked to the media so quickly as reporting on the dead and injured, recovery efforts and speculations about the crash are ongoing.
3) On Sunday, March 24, tovima.gr returns to the specific audio recording and reveals that it is a product of editing. Reported Vassilis Lambropoulos points out that the audio “combines two different conversations between the station master and train drivers”, while a previous part of the dialogue is missing. This part would show that the conversation was between the stationmaster and the driver of a local train and not of the one of the fatal Intercity in Athens-Thessaloniki route.
The stationmaster addresses somebody named “Sotiris” and this is not the intercity train driver who lost his life in the train crash,
4) The newspaper clarifies that the alteration concerns the audios recordings that were made public and does not claim that the audios that are part of the case file have been altered.
5) The VIMA report emphasizes that the testimony of an OSE executive to the Parliament’s Inquiry Office that an “authorized person” in consultation with the Police went and took the audio on a usb stick from the OSE recorder is denied by the Police.
It also clarifies that the tampering has occurred BEFORE the audios were received by the Greek Police on March 3.
In a statement issued on Sunday, the Police fully confirmed the newspaper’s report making clear it had nothing to do with anything that happened before March 3.
It is understood that Police took the audios already published by mainstream media close to conservative New Democracy government.
Tovima report forced the government spokesman to issue a statement short after Saturday midnight in the middle of a long weekend due to Greece’s Independence Day.
Spokesman Pavlos Marinakis spoke of “fake news and baseless claims” and citing the above mentioned ERT report he added “this was already known.”
However, “known” was that there was something “weird”, not that the leaked dialogues were tampered.”
The spokesman also saw “organized financial interests seeking to destabilize the government.”
Interesting also that in this one year of “investigations in the train disaster” nobody seems to have dug deeper into these “weird dialogues.”
Tovima revelations triggered a storm of reactions by Greeks on social media, mainstream media and political parties that now demand “vote of non-confidence” and/or “early elections” [KTG report to follow soon]
What appears to be extremely shocking is that already in the first hours of the train crash in Tempi, a communications management mechanism was activated not only to “damage control” but also to misinform and mislead the public.
Now, everybody speaks of an attempt to cover up not only for the placement of a former baggage-carrier to the position of a station master but also for the responsibilities of then Transportation Minister Kostas Ach. Karamanlis who publicly ignored warnings of train employees regarding the safety of the network.
Summary of highlights thanks to @MylonasMakis
