Lawyer for journalists involved in bus overturn: Three former directors of the Environmental Organization are accused
Parto Burhanpour, the lawyer for the families of Mahshad Karimi and Reyhaneh Yasini, two environmental journalists who were killed in a bus accident in West Azerbaijan, announced that the driver was found guilty as the first defendant and the three then-directors of the Environmental Protection Organization as the second-tier defendants in the accident case.
According to Ms. Burhanpour, those responsible for coordinating the journalists' trip to visit Lake Urmia restoration projects, namely the Director General of Environment of West Azerbaijan Province, the provincial head of the Lake Urmia Restoration Headquarters, and the head of the Urmia County Environmental Department, have been identified as second-tier defendants.
He told ISNA news agency on Tuesday, December 29: "These people are accusing the officials coordinating the trip of negligence and negligence, which led to the deaths of Mahshad Karimi and Reyhaneh Yasini due to the failure to provide a vehicle appropriate to the road conditions and geography of the area and without coordination with traffic safety officials."
A bus carrying environmental journalists who were traveling to the region to visit the "Kani Sib" tunnel overturned on the Urmia-Naghdah highway in July of this year, killing two journalists and injuring 18 others.
Mahshad Karimi and Reyhaneh Yasini, environmental reporters for ISNA and IRNA news agencies, are the two journalists who lost their lives in this incident.
In the Iranian traffic police's announcement regarding the journalists' bus, "the authorities' failure to provide a suitable vehicle and the driver's lack of familiarity with road conditions" were cited as the reasons for the accident.
Parto Burhanpour also expressed the possibility that the number of defendants in the West Azerbaijan Central Prosecutor's Office will increase.
Source: Radio Farda
