Tempi: Request to summon the appellate investigating judge rejected – Families react
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The request to summon the appellate investigating judge, Sotiris Baikamis, as a witness in the trial concerning the handling of the video footage from the fatal Tempi freight train has been rejected.
- 24 Φεβρουαρίου 2026 14:28
The request by the prosecution to summon the appellate investigating judge handling the main case file, Mr. Sotiris Bakaimis, as a witness was rejected by the presiding judge of the Single-Member Misdemeanor Court of Larissa, where the case concerning the handling of the video footage from the Tempi freight train accident is being heard.
According to larissanet.gr, a request to summon the investigating judge’s secretary was also rejected, while the prosecutor of the court recommended that both requests be denied.
The decision prompted strong reactions from victims’ relatives in the courtroom, who urged the presiding judge to reconsider her ruling.
Earlier, lawyer and father of a victim, Mr. Antonis Psaropoulos, concluded his testimony. Among other questions, he was asked by a defense attorney about a statement made by Mr. Nikos Plakias, the father of the twin girls who lost their lives in Tempi, claiming that lawyers had advised relatives not to submit to the investigating judge a video from a shop camera in Leptokarya showing the freight train on the night in question.
“I never said that it would be inconvenient to hand over the video,” Mr. Psaropoulos replied.
The trial continues with the submission of motions by lawyers representing the victims’ families, while the testimony of the first court-appointed expert from the main case file is expected.
It is recalled that the trial concerns the handling of the video footage from the freight train, specifically the failure to submit videos from the Thessaloniki Freight Station and the overwriting of new data on the digital hard drive in the first months after the accident. As a result, it became impossible to retrieve the material when it was eventually delivered to the appellate investigating judge.
The defendants in the case include a former chairman of OSE (Hellenic Railways Organization), a former CEO of OSE, and the legal representative of Interstar Security, the company responsible since 2017 for guarding and video surveillance of OSE’s railway network.
They face charges of repeated document removal and disobedience (the Interstar executive), moral instigation of document removal both once and repeatedly, and moral instigation of disobedience (the former OSE CEO for 2023–2025), as well as moral instigation of document removal (the OSE chairman on February 28, 2023).
