Five convicted over Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster

 
P51 Costa Concordia
EPA
Agency20 July 2013

An Italian court has handed five officers from the Costa Concordia jail sentences for their role in the cruise ship disaster in which 32 people died.

The court agreed to plea bargains for the five, who received sentences of between 18 months and two years, ten months for charges of multiple manslaughter, negligence and shipwreck, in exchange for pleading guilty and avoiding a lengthy trial.

The court in Grosseto today handed down the highest sentence to the crisis coordinator for Costa Crociere, Roberto Ferranini.

The ship'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 plea bargains were handled separately from the trial of Costa Concordia captain Francesco Schettino, who is charged with manslaughter for causing the January 2012 shipwreck off the Tuscan island of Giglio and abandoning the vessel with thousands aboard.

The Concordia, on a week-long Mediterranean cruise, speared a jagged granite reef when, prosecutors allege, Schettino steered the ship too close to Giglio's rocky shores as a favour to a crewman whose relatives live on the island.

If found guilty, he faces up to 20 years in prison. Schettino has denied the charges and insisted that the rock was not on nautical maps.

The reef sliced a 70-metre-long 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 have described a delayed and confused evacuation. The bodies of two victims were never found but they were declared dead after a long search.

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