Giordy71@
00lunedì 9 aprile 2012 22:44
Italy's supreme Court of Cassation opened a hearing on Tuesday to decide on the custody of Francesco Schettino, the commander who left the Costa Concordia cruise liner before many of his passengers on the night of the January 13 disaster in which 32 people died.
Schettino's defence team want him to be released from house arrest.
The prosecution, however, say he should be sent back to prison because there is a danger of him trying to run away or tamper with evidence.
Schettino is being probed for multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, abandoning ship, abandoning those in need of help and failing to communicate properly with the maritime authorities.
The commander was dubbed 'captain coward' in the international media after recordings of a conversation with coast guards suggested he refused orders to return to the semi-submerged Concordia after leaving before evacuation operations had been completed. The ship hit a rock and started taking on water after Schettino deviated from the programmed route to sail close to Tuscany's Giglio Island and give it a 'salute'.
The order to abandon ship came over an hour after the liner had hit the rock, which Schettino claims was uncharted.
The rescue operation would have been more successful had the captain sounded the alarm immediately, the commander general of the Italian coast guard told a Senate hearing in January.
"If we consider for a moment that there were 4,200 people on board, we can say that it went well," Marco Brusco told the hearing. "But if the captain hadn't wasted a precious hour, it would have gone beautifully".