File photo: Egyptian train (Al-Ahram)
A Tanta Criminal Court in Egypt’s Gharbia governorate has sentenced a train conductor to three years in prison for forcing two passengers to jump off a train while it was moving at high speed after they refused to purchase tickets or pay a fine.
The incident in October last year caused one of the two passengers, both of whom were vendors, to be killed under the train wheels, while the other passenger survived with injuries. The train was heading from Tanta in the Nile Delta to the capital, Cairo, when the incident occurred.
Last year, the Public Prosecution charged the conductor for “carrying out actions that harmed two passengers on the train, causing the death of one of them and the injury of the other.”
A statement by Prosecutor-General Hamada El-Sawi shortly after the incident said that the two passengers had boarded the train without a ticket when it stopped in Tanta on its way to Cairo.
The statement said that the conductor opened one of the train doors “as he knew that they did not have enough money to pay for the tickets or the fine,” and gave them the choice to pay, hand over their IDs for a police report, or to jump off the train, according to three eyewitnesses.
The two victims decided to jump. The first passenger to jump, Ahmed Samir, survived the fall with bruises on different parts of his body, while Mohamed Eid, the second passenger, was beheaded by the train wheels, the prosecution said.
The conductor, Magdi Ibrahim, denied the accusations, saying that he tried to prevent them from jumping off the train and that the train was moving at a low speed.
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