The driver of a train that hurtled off the rails in Spain has been charged with 79 counts of reckless homicide and released on bail.
The judge ordered him to report to court every week and forbade him from leaving Spain for six months, the High Court of Galicia, which is leading the investigation, said in a statement.
He also banned him from driving trains for six months.
Reports have suggested that the 52-year-old driver, Francisco Jose Garzon Amo, was travelling at more than double the speed limit for that stretch of the line when the crash happened.
The train came off the line near the pilgrimage city of Santiago de Compostela, north-west Spain.
Police detained Garzon Amo on Thursday, and on Sunday, a police car delivered him in handcuffs to the courthouse for the closed hearing. He had spent the previous night in a police cell.
Just hours before the court hearing began, regional health officials said a woman critically injured in the crash had died in hospital, bringing the toll to 79. Flowers and candles were placed at the gates of the city’s cathedral, a year-round destination for Catholic pilgrims, which will host a memorial service for the victims on Monday.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who was born in Santiago de Compostela, and Crown Prince Felipe are scheduled to attend the service.
The president of the Spanish rail network administrator ADIF, Gonzalo Ferre, said Garzon had been warned to start slowing the train “four kilometres before the accident happened”.
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El Pais newspaper, citing investigation sources, reported that he had told railway officials by radio that the train had taken the curve at 190km/h – more than double the 80km/h speed limit for that section of track.
A resident who rushed to the scene said in a television interview broadcast Sunday that the driver told him minutes after the crash he had been unable to brake.
“He said he had to brake to 80 and couldn’t, that he was going fast,” Evaristo Iglesias told Antena 3. Along with another man, he said, he had accompanied the driver to a stretch of flat land where other injured people were being laid out after the accident.
“He kept saying ‘I want to die! I want to die! I don’t want to see this!”
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