18 Jan 2012

Concordia captain under house arrest

Francesco Schettino, captain of the cruise liner that crashed off the coast of Italy, is accused of manslaughter and placed under house arrest, as the recovery operation continues.

At a court appearance, prosecutors also accused Captain Schettino of causing a shipwreck and abandoning his ship while passengers were still stranded.

He appeared before a judge in Grosseto on Tuesday and was questioned for three hours. He faces up to 12 years in prison for abandoning his ship.

Five more bodies were discovered on Tuesday following Friday’s Costa Concordia disaster, taking the death toll to 11. Another 24 people are still missing, but hopes of finding survivors are fading fast.

Captain Schettino’s lawyer Bruno Leporatti said that he had submitted urine and hair samples, apparently to determine whether he had consumed alcohol or used drugs before the accident.

The chairman of Costa Cruises blamed Captain Schettino for making an unauthorised deviation from the cruise’s route so that he could “make a salute”.

Around 700 people are involved in the recovery operation. Explosives have been set off by the Italian navy to create four small openings in the hull of the cruise ship to try and speed the search for the missing passengers and crew.

A Dutch shipwreck salvage firm said no fuel had leaked from the ship, and that extraction could begin as early as today.

The company, Smit, said it would take from two to four weeks to extract the 500,000 gallons (1.8 million litres) of fuel aboard the ship.

‘Go back to that ship – that is an order’
A recording of a conversation between Captain Schettino and a coastguard emerged on Tuesday, and shed some light on the captain’s actions during the disaster. It appears to show that the captain abandoned the ship before all the passengers were evacuated and then allegedly refused to go back to oversee the evacuation.

Italian news agency ANSA obtained the transcripts, from the Friday when the ship capsized, which also reveal that the first person to call for help was a passenger.

When Schettino protests that he is on hand, if not on board, the coastguard officer cuts in: “Captain. This is an order. Now I am in command. You have declared the abandoning of a ship and are going to co-ordinate the rescue from the bridge. There are already dead bodies.”

“How many?” asks Schettino.

“You’re the one who should be telling me that,” the officer replies. “What do you want to do? Go home? Now go back up and tell me what can be done: how many people there are and what they need.”

“Alright,” says Schettino. “I’m going.”