THE captain of the cruise ship that crashed into an Italian reef has appeared in court to hear the evidence against him, while hundreds of passengers who survived the deadly shipwreck and the families of those who died in it showed up just "to look him in the eye".
The case of Francesco Schettino, 51, was of such enormous interest that a theatre had to be turned into a courtroom in the Tuscan city of Grosseto to accommodate all those who had a legitimate claim to be at the closed-door hearing on Monday.
Wearing dark glasses and a suit, Schettino used a back entrance to slip into the theatre, making no comment to reporters outside. Lawyers said he listened intently to the proceedings inside, where his lawyers raised some objections to the evidence being submitted.
Thirty-two people died after Schettino, in a stunt, took his Costa Concordia cruise ship off course and brought it close to the Tuscan island of Giglio on the night of Jan 13. The ship ran aground and capsized. Schettino then became a lightning rod for international disdain for having left the ship before everyone was evacuated.
Hearings this week will help decide whether the judge will order a trial for Schettino, who is accused of manslaughter, causing the shipwreck and abandoning ship while passengers and crew were still aboard. He denies the accusations and hasn't been charged. Any trial is unlikely to begin before next year.
More than 1000 survivors, victims' relatives and their lawyers attended the hearing on the evidence against Schettino and eight others accused in the shipwreck, including crew members and officials from Concordia owner Costa Crociere.
"We want to look him in the eye to see how he will react to the accusations," said German survivor Michael Liessen, 50, who attended the hearing along with his wife.
A key question is how much of the blame should Schettino himself bear, and how much responsibility for the disaster lies with his crew and employer, Costa Crociere, a division of the Miami-based Carnival Corp.
Last month, court-appointed experts delivered a 270-page report of what went wrong that night based on an analysis of data recorders, ship communications equipment, testimony and other evidence.
The experts, who included two admirals and two engineers, laid most of the blame for the collision with the reef and the botched evacuation on Schettino. But they also noted that not all crew members understood Italian, not all had current safety and evacuation certifications, and not all passengers had had the chance to participate in evacuation drills.
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