Lead investigator of 2023 deadly Greek train crash resigns

ATHENS (Reuters) - The supervisor of Greece's national investigation into a 2023 train crash resigned on Wednesday, a move expected to further complicate efforts to shed light on the country's worst rail disaster that killed 57 people.

According to opinion polls, most Greeks view the crash as emblematic of the neglect of the country's railways in recent decades and also of a persistent failure by the state to address safety concerns. The crash has prompted angry protests, fuelled further by a lack of trust in institutions.

Christos Papadimitriou, the head of the railway division at Greece's Air and Rail Accident Investigation Authority (HARSIA), stepped down days after a top court prosecutor ordered a probe into HARSIA's findings.

In February, HARSIA said the safety gaps, which failed to prevent the head-on collision of a freight train and a passenger train on February 28, 2023, had not yet been fixed.

It also found that a fireball that followed the collision could not have been caused by train equipment, generating doubts about the freight train's cargo as well as political wrangling.

HARSIA decided this week to remove the section which refers to the causes of the fireball, after at least one of the foreign universities cited in its report said it had neither reviewed nor authorised the content.

Greece's Supreme Court prosecutor ordered a probe into the developments to determine if there was an attempt to influence a judicial investigation which has been underway since 2023.

HARSIA, an independent authority, was only set up in late 2023. It launched its probe in March 2024, more than a year after the crash, which meant it had to rely on others for much of its information.

"I tried to serve the public interest... in a difficult situation," said Papadimitriou in his resignation letter, standing by HARSIA's main findings.

(Reporting by Yannis Souliotis; Writing by Renee Maltezou; Editing by Gareth Jones)