Captain placed under house arrest as ship rescue effort suspended
Judge says skipper, called ‘ most hated man in Italy,’ might try to conceal evidence if released
GIGLIO ISLAND, Italy — The judge investigating the Costa Concordia disaster said Wednesday the captain had shirked his responsibilities, as divers halted the search for survivors on the increasingly unstable wreck.
Judge Valeria Montesarchio released captain Francesco Schettino from police custody into house arrest despite noting he made no “serious attempt” to rejoin the stricken vessel to take charge of evacuating the remaining passengers.
Rescuers were forced to suspend their search Wednesday as the vessel shifted. Emergency workers fear that the ship could slip from its resting place on a rocky shelf and slip into deeper waters.
“Instruments indicated the ship had moved, we are in the process of evaluating if it has found a new resting point to allow us to resume. For the moment we cannot even go near it,” emergency services spokesman Luca Cari said.
Divers, mountain rescue teams and marines have recovered 11 bodies from the turbid waters of the half- submerged hulk in the days since Friday night’s disaster. Another 20 passengers and crewmen are unaccounted for, their relatives huddled in hotels in the area anxiously waiting for news of their loved ones.
Schettino — described by one Italian newspaper as “the most hated man in Italy” — faces years in prison on charges of multiple manslaughter and abandoning ship.
The fact that other crew and officers stayed on board to try to evacuate the passengers refuted the captain’s claim that he could not oversee the operation from the vessel, Italian media quoted the judge as saying after she questioned him at length on Tuesday.
She said Schettino had made no “serious attempt” to get back on board his ship, “or even close to it”, after leaving during the evacuation.
She also noted that once he had left the ship, he remained for hours on the rocks with crew members watching the rescue operation.
Explaining her ruling, she said she did not think Schettino posed a flight risk but she did believe he could try to conceal evidence, which is why he needed to be under house arrest.
Schettino arrived at his home in Meta di Sorrento near the southern city of Naples around 2 a. m. accompanied by police officers. Under Italian law he will not be allowed to leave his home or communicate with anyone apart from his lawyer and very close family.
He has defended himself, saying his manoeuvre between the ship hitting rocks and before it keeled on to its side saved lives. He said he left the ship to coordinate evacuation efforts from the shore.
But in a dramatic port authority recording of a telephone exchange as the disaster unfolded late on Friday, Schettino repeatedly told a port official who was ordering him to get back on board the listing vessel that he could not get access, because another lifeboat was in the way.
The Corriere della Sera daily reported that Schettino told prosecutors that he was at the helm when disaster struck, but later fell into the sea and could not get back on board the listing vessel.
Officials had said that 12 Germans, six Italians, four French, two Americans, one Hungarian, one Indian and one Peruvian were missing.
One of those unaccounted for is a five- year- old Italian girl and local shops and bars have been putting up her picture in their windows in the hope that she managed to survive and was lost on the mainland.
About 4,200 people were on board when the ship went down shortly after it had left a port near Rome at the start of a seven- day Mediterranean cruise, and survivors have spoken of scenes of confusion and panic on board.