An Athens court is today due to issue a verdict in the criminal trial for the 2005 Helios air crash which killed 121 people.
Constantinos Mavroidis, the lawyer representing the families of the victims, said the defence in the trial had raised a new claim stating that the crash was caused by a computer in the aircraft which malfunctioned and in turn caused the decompression valve in the cockpit to fail.
“They claim that this was a malfunction which had nothing to do with the maintenance of the plane but the investigation into the crash has revealed other facts which are well known,” said Mavroidis.
Standing trial in Greece are Helios’ managing director Demetris Pantazis, flight operations manager George Kikkides, chief pilot Ianko Stoimenov and chief engineer Alan Irwin.
The trial began on December 17, 2011.
The defendants face charges of negligent manslaughter, which under Greek law carries a penalty of between three months to five years in prison.
The first hearing in the appeal against the Nicosia Criminal Court in Cyprus is set to take place on May 3.
In December the Assizes cleared the five defendants in the trial (Helios as a legal entity, Kikkides, Pantazis, Stoimenov and executive chairman Andreas Drakos) of manslaughter charges.
Flight ZU 522 flew unpiloted for almost three hours before running out of fuel and crashing into mountains just north of Athens on August 12, 2005.
Cyprus Weekly