The survivors and relatives of the Alvia accident in which 80 people died on July 24, 2013 have lost the last opportunity they clung to for an independent technical investigation into the causes of the derailment. The Supreme Court has rejected the claim of the Alvia Victims Platform Association 04155 for the Railway Accident Investigation Commission (CIAF) to carry out a new investigation after the European Commission invalidated the one carried out during the Government of Mariano Rajoy for its lack of impartiality. The resolution of the high court dismisses the appeal presented by the victims against the sentence handed down in May 2022 by the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid, which had ruled that it is up to the CIAF, with its current configuration, to examine and rule on the request for the Asociation.
The victims of the Alvia have been fighting for a decade to have responsibilities for the accident resolved, apart from the trial that was heard for sentencing last July and for which the driver and a senior Adif official face four years in prison. In 2016, the European Commission shot down the investigation that the CIAF promoted just after the accident and that attributed the tragedy to the driver's negligence. The European Railway Agency invalidated that opinion due to various irregularities, among them that among the investigators were the Security directors of Adif and Renfe, organizations involved in the accident, and the relationship that the management of the track could have had with the accident was not analyzed. accident. The survivors and relatives of the deceased had demanded that the Government repeat the investigation and, when it refused, they took the matter to court.
The victims requested that the current members of the CIAF be dismissed so that, once renewed, the investigations could be restarted, but the Supreme Court concludes that the regulation of the CIAF, included in the Railway Sector Law (Law 38/2015), guarantees its independence and is in accordance with the law of the European Union on the matter (directive 2016/798). Its dependence on the Ministry of Transport, the court points out, is only for the purposes of administrative organization, and does not hinder its full independence in the exercise of its investigative functions because it cannot receive instructions from any body of the Administration. The appointment of its members, experts in the field, by the Minister of Transport is subject to parliamentary control, adds the Supreme Court. The court also points out that the function of the commission is exclusively the technical investigation into the causes and circumstances of the accidents, as well as to formulate proposals for improvement if necessary, but in no case to clarify responsibilities, which corresponds to the criminal jurisdiction. .
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