Cameroon train derailment trial opens six months after fatal accident

A trial seeking justice for victims of a major train wreck in Cameroon has opened.

Six months on since it happened, state prosecutors have filed a complaint involving the country’s subsidiary of the French group Bolloré.

An important step for the victims and their families.

“If there are any remains left in the morgue, we ask that they be identified by DNA as we saw in the disaster of Kenyan Airways so that they will be handed over to the families so that they can mourn,” Michel Voukeng, Victims’ lawyer said

The disaster which happened in October 2016 saw 79 people dying in the process.

The inter-city passenger train was travelling from Yaounde to the commercial capital, Douala, when the accident occurred.

If the requisitions of the prosecutors are followed, it would lead to fresh investigations.

“We have reached conclusions in three essential respects: the incompetence of the judge hearing the application for interim measures, the irresponsibility of the action and, above all, the factual and legal impossibility for Camrail to execute those requests made by those judges,” Me Serges Zangue, lawyer for French group Bolloré, Camrail said.

The trial has been postponed until Friday.