Costa Concordia captain Francesco Schettino guilty of manslaughter

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/11/costa-concordia-francesco-schettino-guilty-manslaughter

Version 0 of 1.

The captain of the Costa Concordia, the cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Italy in 2012 killing 32 people, has been found guilty of manslaughter.

It was the most serious charge facing Francesco Schettino, who was sentenced to 16 years in jail – 10 years less than prosecutors had sought.

The disgraced commander, who was dubbed “Captain Coward” after it emerged that he abandoned the sinking ship even as hundreds of panicking passengers awaited rescue, was not present for the reading of the verdict by a panel of three judges.

He was also found guilty of causing the wreck and of deserting his post, but he escaped immediate arrest and will remain free pending his appeal.

It could take years for the man that prosecutors called a “reckless idiot” to begin serving his sentence, if ever, given Italy’s notoriously lengthy appeal process.

The ruling came just hours after Schettino made a tearful final plea for leniency, telling the court that he had “partly died” on the day of the wreck. “All the responsibility has been loaded on to me with no respect for the truth,” he said.

Victims of the disaster celebrated the verdict, a lawyer representing them said. “All of our clients suffered a horrendous ordeal which some may never truly overcome. The trauma they have been through has left some of them needing specialist therapy and counselling to come to terms with what happened and enable them to begin to move on with their lives,” Philip Banks, a personal injury lawyer at Irwin Mitchell, said in a statement.

Related: Costa Concordia: Italian tragedy that reflected state of a nation

The Costa Concordia, which was owned by the Carnival Corporation, was abandoned for more than two years in the Mediterranean. Its removal to Genoa, where it is now being scrapped, was the most expensive maritime salvage operation in history.

While Schettino repeatedly suggested that he was unfairly singled out for blame in a disaster where many elements, including faulty equipment, played a role, prosectors strenuously objected, saying he alone bore the responsibility for the fatalities that night.

On the charge of manslaughter – the most serious one against him – the case turned not on the accident itself, but on Schettino’s decision to delay the order of evacuation for more than an hour.

Lawyers for the state said every passenger and crew member on board could have survived if Schettino had immediately ordered an evacuation. Instead, over months of testimony, the court heard how the captain initially told passengers and officials on land that the ship, which went dark after the crash, had a power outage and was not in peril.

The youngest victim of the tragedy was a five-year-old girl, who drowned with her father after falling through a hole in the boat. The pair had been turned away from one lifeboat for lack of space and were heading to the other side of the ship to try to embark on another.

The ship ran aground just 15 minutes after Schettino ordered a risky pass by the Tuscan island of Giglio. The captain denied he made the order to impress his lover at the time, a Moldovan dancer who was with him on the ship’s bridge and who was forced to admit in court that she had been having an affair with him.

It was Schettino’s decision to abandon his post before all the passengers were evacuated and seek safety on board a lifeboat that most enraged Italians after the disaster. While Schettino insisted in court that he had slipped and fallen into the safety of the lifeboat, that claim was thoroughly discredited by prosecutors.

Schettino suggested some good had come out of the disaster, pointing out that cruise liners now faced tougher regulations and gave more training to officers.The verdict was announced in the local Grosseto theatre, a venue that was used instead of a normal court room in order to accommodate the throngs of journalists covering the trial. The judges in the case deliberated in the theatre’s dressing rooms.