Captain of cruise liner disaster seeks plea deal

Reuters/DPA/Grosseto, ItalyLawyers for Francesco Schettino, captain of the shipwrecked Costa Concordia cruise liner, will again request a plea deal in a trial over the disaster in which 32 people died, his defence said yesterday.Schettino faces charges including manslaughter and causing the loss of his ship in the accident in January 2012 when the huge liner struck a rock off the picturesque island of Giglio and keeled onto its side, setting off a chaotic night evacuation of more than 4,000 passengers and crew.Defence lawyer Donato Laino told reporters Schettino would offer to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of three years and five months, which would allow the complex trial to be resolved more quickly. A previous offer to serve three years and four months was rejected in May.Five other officials – four ship’s officers and the crisis co-ordinator of the vessel’s owners, Costa Cruises – were allowed to present plea bargains for more lenient sentences, with a ruling expected on July 20.Schettino’s lawyers at the trial, which resumed yesterday in the town of Grosseto on Italy’s west coast after a delay due to a lawyers’ strike earlier this month, said he was not the only one to blame for the disaster.“He has never shied away from his responsibilities. But it is only fair that he is treated justly,” another defence lawyer, Francesco Pepe, told reporters outside the courthouse. “He was the captain, it is right that for certain things he should be the point of reference. But it is not right to blame him for responsibilities that he did not have.”Schettino, 52, is accused of abandoning ship before all crew and passengers had been rescued.His lawyers argue that he prevented an even worse disaster by steering the 290m vessel into shallow waters after the impact and that he was thrown overboard due to the angle of the leaning ship.“We expect that right from the first we will finally get to the bottom of things and finally understand what really happened that night,” Pepe said.The trial began on July 9 but was suspended because lawyers involved were taking part in a nationwide strike against measures to streamline civil trials.“We are quite optimistic that the trial will be over rapidly, before the first half of 2014,” chief prosecutor Francesco Verusio said on the sidelines of the trial.“There are no doubts about Schettino’s responsibilities. The only thing that is yet to be seen is the length of his conviction,” Verusio added. Previously, he suggested that the captain was looking at a 20-year jail term.With more than 400 witnesses – including Gregorio De Falco, the port authority commander who famously shouted at Schettino: “Go back aboard, damn it!” – and around 250 plaintiffs, proceedings could drag on.Yesterday’s hearing was mainly occupied by procedural matters, including requests by various people and institutions including Costa Crociere Spa and the Italian environment ministry, who wish to be represented as plaintiffs, before the main arguments begin later in the week.They include Domnica Cemortan, a young Moldovan woman who was at the time a friend of Schettino and was on the liner’s bridge when the collision occurred. Prosecutors plan to call her as a witness.She denied having been the captain’s lover and told reporters she was “surprised” that he was the only accused.“I hope the truth will come out and the guilty are found responsible for this accident,” Cemortan told reporters outside the court. “I’m a passenger like the others.”Costa Cruises, a unit of Carnival Corporation, agreed to pay a 1mn-euro ($1.29mn) fine to settle potential criminal charges in April. That means that for now Schettino is the only person facing trial.But Daniele Bocciolini, a lawyer representing victims, said last week that he hoped investigations would show that the trial should be widened to include all those responsible.As the court proceedings got under way, salvagers said they hoped to pull the vessel upright in September despite risks that it could break up.Eighteen months on, the vessel is still lying on its side near the coast.It is to be righted in September, and later towed to a mainland port for dismantling. Experts working on the project say it may take until next year to remove it from Giglio. Senior salvage master Nicholas Sloane said he expected some of the “minor structural elements” of the ship could collapse.“There will be a lot of deformation,” he said. “It’s almost like a body with a spinal injury, you need to support the neck as she rolls over.”