Tempi: Greece’s Supreme Court judicial council refers Triantopoulos, Agorastos and three others to special court

The Judicial Council of Greece’s Supreme Court (Areios Pagos) has decided to refer to the Special Court the former deputy minister for Civil Protection and Climate Crisis, Christos Triantopoulos, along with four other persons, over the alteration of the Tempi rail disaster scene before all the victims had been recovered, as Greek media Skai and ERT report.

With its decision, the council accepted the proposal that Supreme Court deputy prosecutor Dimitris Mitroulias had made at the end of July 2026, under which Triantopoulos will be tried for the criminal offence of breach of duty in the form of a misdemeanour.

Besides the former deputy minister, the Special Court will also hear the case of former Thessaly regional governor Kostas Agorastos and three officials: Agapios Charakopoulos, then police director of Larissa; Evangelos Falaras, then regional commander of the Thessaly Fire Service; and Vasilis Papageorgiou, Secretary General of Civil Protection. For the latter four, the source article does not specify the concrete charges.

For three other defendants, prosecutor Mitroulias has proposed acquittal, while their files have been separated and sent to the Larissa prosecution for another criminal offence.

Triantopoulos has denied the charge in his testimony given under secret procedure in December 2025 before the council’s investigating judge, where he also presented a written memorandum, claiming he had never ordered the alteration of the scene. Agorastos has also denied responsibility, saying the Thessaly Region had no coordinating or operational competence, only machinery support, and that he had not ordered the covering of the area with gravel, which he said was necessary for operational reasons.

This is a significant new development in the investigations into the disaster of 28 February 2023, in which 57 people lost their lives. The case concerns the period immediately after the accident, when the scene was cleared and levelled before the identification and recovery of the victims had been completed — an aspect that has prompted strong accusations of evidence cover-up from the victims’ families and the opposition.