A Cairo criminal court sentenced on Monday a locomotive driver involved in a deadly 2019 train crash at a Cairo station to 15 years imprisonment and fined him EGP 8 million.

The driver was one of several defendants accused of negligence resulting in the death of 31 people and the injury of 17 others and of violating the requirements of their jobs.

The court handed down 10-year sentences to two other defendants, seven-year sentences to five defendants and three-year sentences to six defendants in the same case.

The prosecution had accused the locomotive driver Alaa Abu El-Ghar with “tampering with the train's equipment and devices, allowing their movement on the railway by disabling one of the tractor's safety devices.”

The prosecution charged the other defendants with forging signatures in attendance books.

In February 2019, a blaze broke out at Cairo's Ramses Railway Station following the train crash, killing 31 people and injuring 17 others.

CCTV video circulated online showed that a locomotive was left unattended at a train yard after its driver jumped out to speak with the conductor of another train that crashed into the first locomotive.

When the two locomotives disengaged, the unmanned locomotive moved at maximum speed towards the railway station until it collided with a concrete barrier at the end of the train line, bursting into flames.