Androulakis to call on Supreme Court to investigate tampered Tempe recordings
PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis has announced that he will ask the Supreme Court on Monday to launch an investigation to establish who was responsible for doctoring audio recordings that made it appear that the February 2023 Tempe railway disaster was caused by human error rather than by the lack of safety systems on the rail network.
“There must be an investigation … the Greek people must know the truth,” Androulakis said, adding that the identify of those responsible must be revealed as “they are dangerous and must be brought before justice.”
Androulakis noted that Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, in his speech to parliament ahead of Thursday night’s vote on PASOK’s motion of no confidence, did not answer the questions about the railway disaster that had led to the censure motion.
“I will repeat them: who was it that, at a time when we had just lost 57 of our fellow human beings, made it a priority to get hold of the dialogues in question, before either justice or the police, and to doctor them and give them to a friendly media outfit in order to manipulate public opinion?”
He said that the no-confidence vote and the resignation of two government ministers showed that Greece has an effective opposition party in the form of PASOK.
“Yes, there is an opposition and it brings results when it operates with seriousness and strength, without communication gimmicks,” Nikos Androulakis said, adding that as a result of him calling the vote Mitsotakis had “lost two of his closest aides, proving that the core of corruption lies within the [prime minister’s office].”
As the debate on the no confidence motion was nearing to a close on Thursday, Minister of State Stavros Papastavrou and Deputy Minister to the Prime Minister Yiannis Bratakos submitted their resignations to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis over a meeting with businessman and newspaper publisher Vangelis Marinakis.
PASOK tabled the no confidence vote after To Vima newspaper – which is published by Marinakis – published a report claiming that a recording of a dialogue between the station master and the train driver, leaked to media hours after the crash, had been allegedly edited to put the blame on human error rather than systemic problems in the rail network.
As was expected, the government survived the vote of no confidence.
