The Alternativa Ferroviaria union has filed a complaint with the Office of the Public Prosecutor of the Supreme Court against the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, for a alleged disclosure of the recordings of communications between the Regulation and Control Center in Atocha of Adif and the train drivers of the trains involved in the fatal accident recorded in Urda (Toledo) on October 28 last.
In the complaint, which Europa Press has obtained access to, the union organization requests that the possible existence of a crime of disclosure of secrets or reserved information be investigated and, where applicable, of disclosure of procedural actions declared secret.
Alternativa Ferroviaria recalls that the head of Transport appeared publicly on the same day as the accident before the media from the Adif Control Center in Atocha, where, according to the union, "he made known information coming from the recordings of the railway communications related to the accident".
The complaint emphasizes that Puente stated in that appearance: "We have listened to some recordings that are extracted from the communications", thereby publicly assuming that he had accessed the content of those recordings before informing about the circumstances of the accident.
The union adds that the minister also said: "We have been able to listen, not all, because obviously the audios we are most interested in knowing were those of the trains that were involved in the accident, but we have checked how the instruction is given to the other trains and on one of the occasions it is also given in an incorrect way and it is the Driver of one of the trains who corrects the Control Center and he tells it: 'It can't be normal running, it has to be in sight running'. The operator says: 'Ah, yes. in sight running'. And that is what we have listened to".
For Alternativa Ferroviaria, with these statements Puente "did not limit himself to communicating general information about the railway accident, but instead made public the specific content of operational communications recorded by Adif", it detailed "the instructions issued from the Control Center" and related "the verbal exchange maintained with one of the train drivers, information to which he had had access in the exercise of his ministerial responsibilities".
In the opinion of the union, "the communications revealed" form part "of operational records of railway safety, whose preservation and custody correspond to the communication systems used by Adif, and whose content constitutes a relevant source of evidence for clarifying the causes of the accident and the possible responsibilities arising from it".
For this reason, Alternativa Ferroviaria considers it "necessary" to clarify whether Puente, "knowing the confidential nature of those communications by reason of his position, proceeded to reveal information that should not have been disclosed, as well as whether the recordings whose content he made public had been incorporated into the judicial proceedings declared secret" by the judge of Orgaz (Toledo) who is hearing the case.