Costa Concordia: five guilty of manslaughter

The court in Grosseto, Italy handed down the highest sentence to the crisis co-ordinator for the Italian cruise company Costa Crociere, Roberto Ferranini, who will serve two years and 10 months.

The ship’s hotel director was sentenced to two years and six months while two bridge officers and a helmsman got sentences ranging from one year and eight months to one year and 11 months.

It is understood the convictions will go to automatic appeal and the defendants will not be jailed yet.

On Thursday, Francesco Schettino – the captain of the Costa Concordia and the main defendant – asked the judge at his manslaughter trial to order tests on the cruise liner’s wreckage to determine why electrical and other systems failed after the vessel struck a reef off the Italian island of Giglio.

The outcome of his request will not be known until at least September.

Captain’s trial adjourned

The captain’s trial has been adjourned until September 23 for a summer’s break.

Schettino is also charged with causing the shipwreck and abandoning ship before all aboard had been evacuated.

His defence claims that no one died in the collision itself, but that the failure of a backup generator and supposedly watertight compartments that were flooded created problems during the evacuation, when the deaths occurred.

If convicted, Schettino could receive up to 20 years in prison.

The cruise company Costa Crociere was given an administration fine of one million euros (£860,000) earlier this year, under a law in which companies whose employees commit crimes can be sanctioned. It has put the blame for the collision on Schettino.