A misdemeanour court in Giza, Cairo, sentences three people to two years in prison in the case of the Badrashin train crash in Egypt, which killed at 19 police conscripts in January.
The 12-carriage train carrying 1328 Central Security Forces conscripts was en route to Cairo from Upper Egypt when one of its cars – carrying around 200 soldiers – derailed, hitting a goods train parked outside a storage depot.
The train's driver and two supervisors received the two-year prison sentence on charges of involuntary manslaughter and negligence. A maintenance engineer, the train's commissary and the driver's assistant, who were also on trial, were acquitted.
The court's ruling details that the technical committee investigating the cause of the accident discovered that a part of the last carriage fell off, which caused it to derail.
The court found the three "[employees] who had long work experience in the railway service" guilty of neglecting duty was to ensure the train was fit to make the journey, according to the ruling.
"The accident occurred because [they] did not perform their job to properly check the train, which led to the death of the victims and the injury of others," the ruling concludes.
The verdict could be appealed by Egypt's prosecutor-general office.
Egypt has experienced numerous train crashes within the past two decades.
Calls for substantial reforms in the railway had increased following the Badrashin incident, which occurred days after 50 schoolchildren were killed when their bus was hit by a train.
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