Spanish train crash driver suspected of killing 78 REFUSES to answer police questions as line reopens and passengers are taken past wreckage for first time

Train driver Francisco Jose Garzon 'formally detained' by Spanish police



The passenger train derailed outside city of Santiago de Compostela

All eight carriages of the Madrid to Ferrol train derailed



The train was carrying 218 passengers when it smashed into the wall



Many were travelling to the area on the eve of a Christian festival

Foreign Office confirmed a British citizen is among the injured



Driver posted picture of train speedometer at 125mph in March last year

Spanish PM has visited scene and declared three days official mourning



The train driver suspected of causing the Spanish rail crash which left 78 people dead has refused to answer police questions - as the track reopened for the first time today.

Francisco Jose Garzon, 52, who is under armed guard in hospital, is to be questioned over suspected reckless driving following the devastating crash which left almost 170 passengers injured.

Investigators are looking into possible failings by the driver after the Madrid to Ferrol service derailed on Wednesday night as it approached the city of Santiago de Compostela.

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There must be many injured': Minutes after the crash Francisco Jose Garzon was photographed making a phone call while being helped from his train's mangled remains by a medic

Injured: Minutes after the crash, Garzon was photographed being helped from his train's mangled remains. He is being questioned by police over his role in the crash

Back in action: The first Madrid-Ferrol train service since the accident passes next to the wreckage of the previous one on Saturday

Authorities have located the train's so-called 'black box' which is expected to shed further light on the disaster's cause.

It came as the line reopened for the first time today, with pictures showing a Madrid-Ferrol train passing next to the wreckage of the train involved in the crash.

The train driver alleged to have caused the disaster radioed colleagues moments after the tragedy to admit: ‘I have f***** it all up. I want to die.’

Garzon spoke out as he lay injured in his cab near scores of dead and wounded after speeding on a bend where his train derailed.

A Spanish police spokesman confirmed the driver had refused to answer questions and he is now expected to questioned by a judge.

Jaime Iglesias, police chief of Spain's northwest Galicia region, said Amo would be questioned 'as a suspect for a crime linked to the cause of the accident' and described the alleged offence as 'recklessness'.

Tragic: Ana Maria Cordoba (left), from northern Virginia, died while fellow American Myrta Fariza, from Houston, Texas, is in critical condition



Police said the number of dead, yesterday thought to be 80, has been reduced to 78 as forensic science units continue to identify remains.

A spokesman for Spain's National Police said that Amo was arrested in hospital yesterday at 8pm on suspicion of causing the accident.

Some 72 of those killed in the catastrophe have now been formally identified, while DNA results for the remaining six are expected in the coming days.

The revised death toll came as forensic scientists matched body parts with each other at a makeshift morgue set up in a sports arena.

One Briton has been confirmed by the Foreign Office to be among the 168 injured passengers, while 32 people are still believed to be in a critical condition.

Early indications suggested the train was traveling at around 118mph - more than twice the 50mph speed limit - when it crashed while heading into a curve.

Gonzalo Ferre, president of the rail infrastructure company Adif, said the driver should have started slowing the train 2.5 miles before reaching a dangerous bend that train drivers had been told to respect.

'Four kilometres before the accident happened he already had warnings that he had to begin slowing his speed, because as soon as he exits the tunnel he needs to be travelling at 80 kilometers per hour,' Mr Ferre said.

Horror: Garzon was behind the controls when the Madrid to Ferrol high-speed rail link hurtled into a wall at 120mph near the city of Santiago de Compostela on Wednesday night

Unrecognisable: A crane removes one of the carriages at the scene of a train accident

Long wait: Relatives of victims involved in the crash wait for information about their loved ones A probe is also looking into whether the Alvia 730 series train's in-built speed regulation systems failed. Yesterday, as pictures of him at the scene with blood streaming down his face emerged, he was under police guard in hospital with his mother while a judge prepared to quiz him. Earlier reports of his radio conversations suggest that he has admitted driving at 118mph round the bend, where the speed limit is 50mph. The death toll – at 80 on Thursday – was revised to 78 after forensic teams re-checked the bodies of victims against the list of missing passengers.

An unnamed British man remains in hospital in Santiago de Compostela, north-west Spain, with ‘non life-threatening’ injuries. Police formally arrested Garzon ‘on suspicion of a criminal act linked to causing the accident’. Enraged Spaniards called for his death on Twitter as authorities tried to calm anger, insisting that they had not yet got to the bottom of Wednesday evening’s crash and experts said several factors could be to blame. It is thought the driver, who boasted on Facebook last year about going 125mph and wanting to set off police speed guns, faces manslaughter charges. Yesterday he spoke to a local paper from his hospital bed using a mobile phone, after having nine stitches to a head wound, to say: ‘Imagine how I’m feeling. I can’t say anything at the moment.’ One Spaniard tweeted: ‘Death to this man’. Mexican Carlos Martinez said: ‘The Spanish government should apply the death penalty . . . but only after torturing him.’ Support: King Juan Carlos of Spain and his wife, Queen Sofia of Spain are pictured visiting crash victims at a hospital in Santiago de Compostela, Spain Mangled: A fireman sifts through the wreckage of one of the eight derailed train carriages Francisco Jose Garzon (left), one of the drivers on the train which crashed, is reported to have posted a picture on Facebook in March last year of a train speedometer at 125mph (right)

Rescue: A fireman carries a wounded victim from the wreckage of the train crash near Santiago de Compostela Terrifying: A horrifying video has been released of the moment the train hurtled off the tracks near the city of Santiago de Compostela

Admission: One of the drivers told railway officials by radio that he took the bend at 190 kilometres (118 miles) per hour in an urban zone with a speed limit of 80 kph, daily El Pais reported

Colleagues defended Garzon, who is separated without children. One said: ‘He’s an excellent person, a really nice bloke. Everyone’s talking about him speeding but normally an accident is not just caused by one thing.’

Investigators have yet to open the black box to shed light on the crash, and say the judge who can authorise it is focusing on identifying victims.

The bodies of 60 people have been handed to their families, and the first funerals are expected on Monday.

One of the dead was today identified as American Ana Maria Cordoba, from northern Virginia, who was traveling to see her pilgrim son with husband Philippe and daughter Christina, a high school senior in the family's hometown of Arlington.

Officials from the Catholic Church diocese outside Washington, D.C., where she worked as an administrative employee, confirmed her death. Her husband and daughter are believed to have survived and are being treated in hospital for their injuries.



The transcripts of the recording was released hours after it was reported Garzon previously posted a picture on Facebook of a train speedometer at 125mph last year.

According to reports he also boasted about how fast he was going. The webpage has disappeared after images appeared on Spanish TV and newspaper websites.

Alongside the photo, which was published in March last year, he wrote: 'What joy it would be to get level with the police and then go past them making their speed guns go off. Ha ha!.'

A terrifying video emerged which captured the moment the train crashed.



All eight carriages of the Madrid to Ferrol train derailed near the city of Santiago de Compostela.



Clearance: Rescue workers at the accident site at the entrance of Santiago de Compostela Station

Aftermath: Rail personnel clear the area and fix the track at the site of the accident

Wreckage: Part of the train is carried away following the horrific crash

Twisted: The accident is the worst train accident in 30 years and television footage showed one wagon pointing upwards into the air with one of its ends twisted and disfigured

Accident: The train jumped the tracks on a bend just before arriving in the northwestern shrine city of Santiago de Compostela

Horrifying: At least 80 people have been killed and up to 141 injured including one Briton after a packed Spanish passenger train derailed on a bend last night

Derailed: All eight carriages of the Madrid to Ferrol train came off the tracks near the city of Santiago de Compostela

Tragic: Emergency crews work to help those who were injured in the Spanish train crash which happened just outside Santiago de Compostela

Dramatic video footage from a security camera shows the train careering into a concrete wall as it came off the rails on the bend, before flipping onto its side and hurtling down the railway line with its terrified passengers on board. One of the drivers was trapped in his cabin and told the railway station by radio that the train entered the bend at 190 kilometres per hour (120 mph), reported newspaper El Pais.

The speed limit on that section of track is 80km/h (50mph).

'We're only human! We're only human!' he told the station, the newspaper said, citing sources close to the investigation. 'I hope there are no dead, because this will fall on my conscience.' Police have put an unnamed train driver under formal investigation - the Galicia government said one driver was in hospital. RELATED ARTICLES Previous

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Next 70-year-old man knocked over mother and child then dragged... Small plane crashes into occupied house and bursts into... Share this article Share Newspaper reports cited witnesses as saying driver Francisco Jose Garzon,who helped rescue victims, had shouted: 'I've derailed! What do I do?' into a phone.

The accident is the worst train accident in 30 years and television footage showed one wagon pointing upwards into the air with one of its ends twisted and disfigured. Another carriage that had been severed in two could be seen lying on a road near the track. State-owned train operator Renfe said in a statement that 218 passengers and an unspecified number of staff were on board at the time of the accident. Renfe said the derailment happened at 8.41pm local time on a high-speed section that was inaugurated two years ago.

After the crash, bodies were seen covered in blankets next to the tracks and rescue workers tried to get trapped people out of the train's carriages, with smoke billowing from some of the wreckage.

Some passengers were pulled out of broken windows, and one man stood on a carriage lying on its side, using a pickaxe to try to smash through a window. Belongings: Police officers collect baggage at the scene of a train crash Relatives of the victims of a train accident reacts outside the Cersia building for more information

Harrowing: Families wait for further information during the identification of the bodies Difficult: Friends and family waited anxiously for news of their loved ones

Public visit: Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy (centre), Public Works Minister Ana Pastor (right), and Galician Regional President Alberto Nunez Feijoo (second left) visit the scene of a train accident in Santiago de Compostela Declaration: The Spanish Prime Minister declared three days official mourning throughout Spain TVE showed footage of what appeared to be several bodies covered by blankets alongside the tracks next to the damaged train wagons and rescue workers entering toppled carriages through broken windows. The crash happened about an hour before sunset after the train emerged from a tunnel and derailed on the curve - sending cars flying off the tracks.

As casualties were taken to hospitals in Santiago and two other cities in the region, authorities appealed for people to donate blood.

Removal: A carriage is lifted at the scene of a train crash Surveying the scene: The crash happened about an hour before sunset after the train emerged from a tunnel and derailed on the curve - sending cars flying off the tracks Statement: State-owned train operator Renfe said in a statement that 218 passengers and an unspecified number of staff were on board at the time of the accident Terrifying: A general view of the train crash. The incident happened as Catholic pilgrims converged on Santiago de Compostela to celebrate a festival honouring St James, the disciple of Jesus whose remains are said to rest in a shrine Investigation: Emergency personnel work through the debris at the scene Cause: An official inspects the train engine amongst the wreckage of a train crash Ownership: The train, which belongs to the state-owned Renfe company, was not an AVE high speed train, but it was a relatively luxurious version that uses the same track as Spain's fastest expresses CYBER CROOKS TARGET CRASH

Cyber crooks attempted to capitalise on the devastating rail disaster by sending out a stream of bogus news emails pertaining to be CNN updates in a scam to steal bank details.

Fraudsters are believed to have targeted millions of people as the death toll rose following the tragedy in Santiago de Compostela. They launched their campaign just a day after sophisticated criminals attempted to cash in on the birth of the Royal baby. A 'steady flow' of messages designed to look like emails from CNN have been sent out this week, according to analysts at web security firm Appriver. In each case, the fraudsters rely on recipients clicking on links in the fake emails which claim to direct them to updates from the American news organisation. But instead, unwitting readers are lured onto a webpage where their computer can be infected by a virus designed to steal their bank details. A CNN spokesman said: 'Our security team is currently investigating these latest emails and we will continue to do everything possible to combat attempts to use our brand in this way'. Neighbours responded to calls from the police to bring blankets and sheets to the scene along with bottles of water. As darkness fell, generators and emergency lighting were brought in to help the rescue teams. Alberto Nunez Feijoo, president of the region of Galicia, described the scene as 'Dante-esque'.

One of the passengers, Sergio Prego, said: 'The train travelled very fast and derailed and turned over on the bend in the track.

'It's a disaster. I've been very lucky because I'm one of the few to be able to walk out.'

Another passenger, Ricardo Montero, said: 'When the train reached that bend it began to flip over, many times, with some carriages ending up on top of others, leaving many people trapped below. 'We had to get under the carriages to get out.'

Lidia Cannon, who previously lived in the city and was visiting for the local fiesta celebrating St James, said she saw a woman who had lost a foot as a result of the train crash. She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'We heard a big bang, like, we thought it was an air crash, I thought it was a car crash, other people thought it was a bomb. It was very, very loud, the noise.'

Ms Cannon said people went to help and told of one man's experience of visiting the crash site. People living nearby rushed to the scene with bottles of water and blankets Devastation: At least 80 have died and rescue efforts went on through the night

Carnage: People look down from the rail bridge on the aftermath of a devastating train crash in north west Spain

Injured: A woman is carried from the wreckage of the train on a stretcher as emergency service workers try to rescue survivors

Emergency: Rescue workers carry victims on stretchers away for treatment. More than 70 bodies are reported to have been removed from the wreckage

Two victims with head wounds - one with his arm in a sling - are helped by a rescue worker

WORST SPANISH TRAIN CRASH FOR DECADES

The Spanish train crash is the worst the country has experienced since a terrible three-train accident in a tunnel in Leon province in 1944. Due to heavy censorship at the time, the exact death toll for the Leon disaster has never been established. The official figure was given as 78 dead, but it is thought that as many as 250 may have been killed.

There was another serious accident in Spain 1972 when a Madrid to Cadiz express collided head-on with a local train on the outskirts of Seville in the south west of the country. A total of 77 people died, with more than 100 injured.

The Madrid train bombings of March 2004 produced a death toll of 191- but this was a terrorist outrage and not an accident. There were 10 explosions aboard four commuter trains, with the attacks being directed by an al Qaida-inspired terrorist cell.

The latest incident comes less than two weeks after six people were killed and scores injured in a train crash just south of Paris.

Recent bad train crashes in Europe include one in February 2010 in Buizingen in Belgium which claimed the lives of 18 people, a September 2006 crash of a magnetic levitation train on a test track in the Emsland area of Germany which killed 23 people, and a derailment of a packed train outside the Montenegro capital of Podgorica in January 2006 in which 46 people died.

In Britain, no passenger has been killed in a train accident since 84-year-old Margaret Masson from Glasgow died following the Virgin West Coast Pendolino train derailment at Grayrigg in Cumbria in February 2007.

In terms of deaths, the worst rail crashes in recent times in the UK were outside Paddington in west London in October 1999 when 31 people died in a two-train collision after one of them had gone through a red light, and at Clapham in south London in December 1988 when 35 people were killed in a three-train crash.

Britain's worst peace-time crash was in 1952 at Harrow and Wealdstone in north west London when 112 people died in a three-train disaster.

The worst rail disaster in Britain was at Quintinshill near Gretna Green in Scotland in 1915 during the First World War in a multiple-train smash in which a troop train caught fire, killing more than 220 people.



She said: 'He couldn't cope with it. He said he was there 20 minutes but he took out a man that was asking for his wife and his wife was inside, dead. A boy was looking for his girlfriend and she was inside the train, dead.



'He was taking out people that had mobile phones in their pockets ringing all the time. He couldn't cope with it because policemen and doctors and everyone was crying and he had to leave.



'I saw a woman who had lost one foot. But instead of crying or shouting or whatever because of the pain she was looking very, very serious. They were carrying her away and she had her sight, her eyes, were looking to one point - she was in shock.'



Miguel Morado, journalist at local newspaper La Voz de Galicia said: 'Everything points to inadequate [sic] speed - the train driver who survived the crash, when he was being rescued didn't know that people had died, and admitted going too fast with the train...



'He gave a figure he said he was going at 190 km/h - this is part of a network where the speed limit is 80.



'Although it's clear that it was human error, that the driver made a mistake, there's also the question of the line in that part of the network.

Galicia is distant from the centre, it's never been well connected with Madrid... The people who made the decisions were too hasty.'



Officials said they believed the crash was an accident but declined to offer more details, saying an investigation was under way into the cause.



Renfe said that it - and track operator Adif - were collaborating with a judge who has been appointed to probe the accident.

Passenger Ricardo Montesco said: ‘It was going so quickly . . . it seems that on a curve the train started to twist, and the carriages piled up one on top of the other.

The accident occurred near the station in Santiago de Compostela, 60 miles south of El Ferrol.



The train, which belongs to the state-owned Renfe company, was not an AVE high speed train, but it was a relatively luxurious version that uses the same track as Spain's fastest expresses.

It was Spain's deadliest train accident in decades.



In 1944, a train travelling from Madrid to Galicia crashed and killed 78 people. Another accident in 1972 left 77 dead on a track to south-western Seville, according to Spanish news agency Europa Press.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who was born in Santiago de Compostela, the capital of Galicia region, visited the site and the main hospital on this morning.



He declared three days of official national mourning for the victims of the disaster



A man covered in dirt and blood is stretchered away

Horror: A woman is evacuated by emergency workers

A man comforts a victim of the crash. A man who was on the train told reporters that the train started to twist, and the carriages piled up one on top of the other

Support: A citizen and a local policeman rescue an injured survivor

