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ITF slams Prestige Master Mangouras jail sentence

ITF slams Prestige Master Mangouras jail sentence
The International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) has slammed the jail sentence hand down to Captain Apostolos Mangouras for the Prestige casualty in 2002.

Earlier this week the Spanish Supreme Court sentenced Captain Mangouras, aged 81, to two years in jail for recklessness resulting in catastrophic environmental damage, overturning a previous sentence which cleared him of criminal responsibility.

ITF seafarers’ section chair Dave Heindel said: “This decision represents the dying gasps of a 14 year old attempt to deflect blame onto the shoulders of an octogenarian man, who has been cleared in the court of world opinion and by his peers.

“Thankfully it is likely to be as unenforceable as it is illogical. This innocent man cannot again be made to sit needlessly in jail.”

He added, “The Mangouras case was one of the worse examples of the kneejerk criminalisation of seafarers.”