ROME -- The examining magistrate from the Amposta Court near Tarragona has decided to archive the case of an Erasmus bus accident in March killing 13 female students in Catalonia, seven of whom were Italian, judicial sources said Thursday.

 According to the Spanish news agency EFE, in the decision to dismiss the case -- a decision which could still be appealed -- the magistrate Gloria Granell Rul excluded that the accident could have been caused by mechanical problems or by impulsive driving, and she deferred the tasks to the civil proceedings.

She deemed that no one was guilty and that there would be no criminal procedure. “Seeing the results of the investigations, we have not acknowledged any responsibility so serious as to be penally punished,” the magistrate said.

 The accident happened March 20, on the motorway near Freginals, where a convoy of five buses were returning after being hired by Erasmus Student Network to transport the students from Barcelona to Valencia to celebrate the ‘Fiesta de Las Fallas.’

 “I fell asleep,” said the 62-year old driver for 'Autocares Alejandro,' who crashed through the guardrail and into a car travelling in the opposite direction -- the two aboard the car were injured but survived. The driver was initially detained for “homicide by carelessness.” The Catalonian high court confirmed that he tested negative for drugs and alcohol. He had been working as a bus driver for 17 years, and had apparently never been involved in an accident.

 The driver was meant to appear before the magistrate for his hearing Thursday, but the magistrate closed the case with only 48 hours of notice. The Spanish lawyer for the families of the deceased, Christian Maiolo, said that “this is a very serious decision made without bringing the investigation to the end and without anyone else having asked for its dismissal, neither the defence or the public prosecutor. We did not even hear the driver under investigation.”

 The families of the girls are in a state of shock and are asking for a European intervention. “How can you dismiss a penal investigation into a road accident with 13 victims in which the bus driver admitted to having fallen asleep?” asks Paolo Bonello, the father of Francesca, one of the seven Italian girls killed along with two German, one French, Romanian, Austrian, and one from Uzbekistan -- all aged between 19 and 25.

 nkd