"5 convicted in Costa Concordia wreck" by Colleen Barry | Associated Press, July 21, 2013
GROSSETO, Italy — An Italian court on Saturday convicted five employees of an Italian cruise company over the Costa Concordia shipwreck that killed 32 crew and passengers, handing down a maximum sentence of two years and 10 months reached in plea bargains.
Related: Knoxing Italy's Justice System
Now, now, it has it's good points.
Btw, Globe, did they ever extradite that CIA agent back to Italy?
The guilty verdicts for multiple manslaughter and negligence were the first reached in the tragic sinking of the cruise liner carrying more than 4,000 crew and passengers near the Tuscan shore in January 2012.
Related: Cruising Along
If your friends could see you now....
The ship’s captain, the only remaining defendant, was denied a plea bargain and is being tried separately.
Lawyers representing the victims complained that the sentences agreed in the plea bargain — all below three years — were inadequate for the gravity of the disaster. ‘‘It seems like a sentence for illegal construction,’’ said Massimiliano Gabrielli. ‘‘It’s an embarrassment.’’
Another lawyer for victims, Daniele Bocciolini, called the sentences ‘‘insufficient’’ and questioned the prosecutors’ hypothesis placing the lion’s share of the blame on Captain Francesco Schettino, who faces up to 20 years if found guilty.
The five employees of Costa Crociere SpA, the cruise company, were charged for their roles in the nautical maneuver that put the ship in peril, evacuation, and response to the emergency.
The longest sentence went to the company’s crisis coordinator, who was sentenced to two years and 10 months.
Concordia’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. The bridge officials and helmsman were also convicted of a charge of causing a shipwreck, in addition to multiple manslaughter and negligence.
The court’s reasoning for its decision will be released within 90 days, as is standard in Italy.
‘‘I don’t think there are any more doubt about the responsibility that falls above all on the shoulders of Schettino,’’ said Prosecutor Francesco Verusio.
He's the captain.
Schettino is charged with manslaughter for causing the shipwreck off the Tuscan island of Giglio and abandoning the vessel with thousands aboard. That trial opened this week, and was continued after two hearings until the end of September.
Ooooh, that last one. Captain (or president) always goes down with the ship.
The Concordia, on a weeklong Mediterranean cruise, speared a jagged granite reef when, prosecutors allege, Schettino steered the ship too close to Giglio’s rocky shores as a favor to a crewman whose relatives live on the island. Schettino has denied the charges and insisted that the rock was not in nautical maps.
The reef sliced a 230-foot gash in the hull. Seawater rushed in, causing the ship to rapidly lean to one side until it capsized, then drifted to a rocky stretch of seabed just outside the island’s tiny port.
Survivors described a delayed and confused evacuation. The bodies of two victims were never found, but they were declared dead after a long search.
On Thursday, the captain of the Concordia 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 the reef.
The outcome of the request from Schettino won’t be known until at least September. After only two full days of hearings in that case, Judge Giovanni Puliatti on Thursday adjourned the trial until Sept. 23 for summer’s break.
Schettino is also charged with causing the shipwreck and abandoning ship before all aboard had been evacuated.
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Related:
Italy ship owner seeks victim status
Italian ship captain is denied plea deal
Sunday Globe Special: Costa Concordia Clean-Up
"Cruise line fined after Italy disaster" Associated Press, April 11, 2013
ROME — A judge in Tuscany fined Italian cruise line Costa Crociere SpA $1.3 million Wednesday for the 2012 shipwreck of the Concordia cruise ship, which killed 32 people.
Costa had asked for a plea bargain deal to respond to the sanctions,
which under Italian law are for companies whose employees commit crimes.
Judge Valeria Montesarchio of the Grosseto tribunal accepted the plea
after a hearing.
Costa, a division of Miami-based Carnival Corp., has sought to blame the
disaster entirely on Captain Francesco Schettino, who took the cruise
ship off course and rammed it into a reef off the island of Giglio on
Jan. 13, 2012. The stunt left a 230-foot gash in the hull, causing the
liner to take on water....
The ship remains on its side in Giglio’s port.
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Also see:
"Lawyers’ strike postpones trial of captain of wrecked cruise liner; He is accused of manslaughter, abandoning ship" by Paolo Santalucia and Frances D’Emilio | Associated Press, July 10, 2013
GROSSETO, Italy — The trial of the captain of the shipwrecked Costa Concordia cruise liner began Tuesday in a theater in Tuscany converted into a courtroom to accommodate all the survivors and relatives of the 32 victims who want to see justice carried out in the 2012 tragedy, but the hearing was quickly postponed because of a nationwide strike by lawyers....
Over austerity?
Judge Giovanni Puliatti adjourned the trial until July 17 because of a strike by lawyers over a long-running dispute with the Justice Ministry over proposed reforms....
The Concordia itself lies on its side, half-submerged off the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, blighting the seascape for another summer in an otherwise pristine part of the Mediterranean.
Some 18 months after the hulking ship ran aground, it is a daily reminder of how slow the progress in dealing with the aftermath has been. The remains of two of the 32 dead have yet to be found. The timetable to salvage it has stretched on....
Doesn't it always seem that way no matter what destruction is caused, be it nature or man-made (war)?
Katrina destruction never rebuilt (except touristy and rich N.O.); Sandy beaches still a mess (despite what the Globe says), but hey, it was a good photo-op for the president and contributed to the narrative; refugees and war wreckage left in our wake? Where do you want me to start? Maybe I should name the countries not under U.S. attack. That would probably be easier; Gulf's been cleaned up, never mind the leaks, and on and on and on.
Prosecutors contend that on the night of Jan. 13, 2012, the sole defendant, Francesco Schettino, steered the ship too close to the island’s coastline in a publicity stunt for Costa Crociere and accidentally rammed the jagged reef. The cruise company denies that scenario.
Survivors described a chaotic and delayed evacuation, with crew allegedly downplaying the seriousness of the collision, which caused a gash 230-feet long in the Concordia’s side and let seawater rush into the ship.
Schettino has protested his innocence. He insists that his skillful steering of the liner to just outside the port saved thousands of lives. He also contends the ship’s navigational charts didn’t indicate the reef was in its path as it cruised near the island on part of a weeklong Mediterranean tour.
A recording of a phone conversation between Schettino and an exasperated Italian coast guard official who repeatedly ordered the captain in vain to scramble back aboard the ship to direct the evacuation was played again and again in broadcasts around the world.
In interviews, Schettino insisted he is no coward. He said he had to leave the capsizing boat before it was impossible to launch any more lifeboats and that in the darkness he didn’t see a ladder he could have used to climb back aboard.
I dunno; in all the movies I've seen....
On Giglio, where residents depend on tourism and fishing for their livelihoods, the wreckage still mars the panorama from the island’s port.
Never mind the fuel leak we were told didn't happen or wasn't much.
Salvage specialists had originally predicted the ship could be tipped upright in an ambitious operation so towing could begin in spring of this year. But that timetable has slipped away.
The removal project involves some 400 workers representing 18 nationalities, including engineers and divers. On Monday, crews were busy securing some of the caissons being attached to one side of the crippled ship, which, the planners hope, will help the wreckage stay afloat when eventually righted so it can be towed to the mainland.
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Well, they don't have much longer:
"Salvage crews rush for 1 chance to move Concordia" by Frances D’Emilio | Associated Press, July 16, 2013
GIGLIO, Italy — Salvage crews are working against time to remove the shipwrecked Costa Concordia cruise ship, which is steadily being crushed under its own weight on its granite seabed off the Tuscan island of Giglio. Officials said Monday that if this attempt fails, there won’t be a second chance.
Nick Sloane, the leader of the operation, said the Concordia has compressed some 10 feet since it came to rest on the rocks Jan. 13, 2012, after ramming a jagged reef during a publicity stunt allegedly ordered by the captain; 32 people were killed.
Sloane, an engineer for US-owned company Titan Salvage, said experts would have one chance to pull the ship upright and float it away to the mainland for demolition. The attempt will probably take place in mid-September. ‘‘We cannot put it back’’ down and start over, said Sloane.
Sloane spoke aboard a work boat as he accompanied journalists for a close-hand look of the wreckage on the eve of the trial of Captain Francesco Schettino, who is charged with manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, and abandoning the ship before all passengers had been evacuated. The trial, which was supposed to get underway July 9, was postponed until Wednesday due to a lawyers’ strike.
The timetable to remove the Concordia has also suffered delays. The original timetable envisioned removal before start of this summer, but harsh weather undermined those plans.
‘‘We had a rough winter,’’ said Sloane, explaining that winter’s rough sea conditions made it risky for diving teams to install cement-filled bags that would provide a more stable base on which to roll the ship upright.
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I'm going to retire to my cabin. Now if I could only find something to read.
