Prestige oil spill captain should not go to jail, say prosecutors as trial draws to close

The Prestige oil tanker, which sank off the coast of Galicia in 2002 and disgorged 60,000 tons of fuel oil causing an environmental catastrophe, was in a woeful state of repair and its captain "knew it," prosecutors summed up on the final day of the macro-trial into the disaster.

Apostolos Mangouras displayed a "conspiratorial attitude" in order to keep the vessel operational, but although the veteran Greek sailor has been charged as the principal cause of the disaster by the Public Prosecutor's Office, the state has decided that he has spent long enough behind bars.

We were obliged to charge him from a legal-technical point of view but jailing him is not sensible or reasonable"

"We do not want to give the idea that this case is a state against a poor sea captain," said the prosecutor, who also absolved the director of the Merchant Marine, José Luis López Sors. Sors ordered the vessel to be towed back out to sea after it approached Fisterra. Private prosecutors in the case want Sors to be convicted for his role in the catastrophe.