Costa Concordia captain Francesco Schettino told a court on Tuesday that he was showing off when he steered the cruise ship onto rocks off the Italian island of Giglio.
However, he denied that the person he was most trying to impress was a blonde Moldovan dancer nearly 20 years his junior who was with him on the bridge at the time of the January 2012 disaster, which resulted in the death of 32 passengers and crew.
Testifying for the first time in his trial for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his ship, Schettino presented himself as a captain who had been badly briefed by his crew about the disastrous route the 115,000-tonne vessel was fixed on when he returned to the bridge after dinner.
Photo: AFP
On the sidelines of the hearing, prosecutor Francesco Verusio said he was planning to request a 20-year prison term for the captain.
Schettino, 54, told the court that it was normal “commercial” practice to navigate close to the coast to impress passengers.
On this occasion, he also wanted to “salute” a retired colleague living on Giglio and the ship’s head waiter, who came from the island.
“I was trying to catch three pigeons with one bean,” Schettino, said, using an Italian expression that translates as “killing three birds with one stone.”
At the moment he resumed control of the boat, he believed it to be fixed on a safe route that would take it past Giglio on a line 0.8km offshore.
“If the crew had any doubt about that, they should have told me,” he said.
Asked why he had asked the coastguard “is there water at 0.3 miles [0.48km]?” Schettino replied: “I was just making conversation.”
The captain denied taking a reckless risk to impress Domnica Cemortan, with whom he had just dined.
An employee of Costa Concordia, the Moldovan dancer was on the ship as an unauthorized passenger. She has testified that she was having an affair with the married captain.
Wearing a gray suit and aviator-style sunglasses, the man dubbed “Captain Coward” had appeared pensive as he arrived at a theater in the Tuscan town of Grosseto, which is being used as a temporary courtroom.
However, he testified confidently in his first appearance in the trial which began in July last year.
Recordings played in court from the “black box” voice recorder on the ship’s bridge appeared to indicate that he had no idea of how much danger the ship was in.
Just minutes before disaster struck, the captain is heard ordering a change of direction before joking in English: “Otherwise we go on the rocks.”
In the final sentence of the recording, after the crash, Schettino is heard to say: “Madonna, what have I done?”
The Concordia, twice the size of the Titanic, was moving at a brisk 16 knots and had 4,229 people from 70 countries on board when it struck the rocks at 9:45pm.
Holed below its waterline on impact, the giant vessel ended up half-submerged on the seabed on its starboard side.
Schettino’s employers have accused him of making an “unapproved and unauthorized” deviation from the ship’s set route.
He is also accused of recklessly delaying the evacuation order until after it was clear the ship was going down — a charge the captain dismissed in court.
Schettino’s ignominious reputation is largely based on his conduct after the crash.
Only 29 minutes after he had given the order to passengers and crew to evacuate, and with lifeboats still dotting the surrounding waters, Schettino himself left the vessel with hundreds of those onboard still unaccounted for.
He later rebuffed a furious coastguard officer’s order that he return out of respect for both the law and centuries-old sailors’ code.
The cross-examination of Schettino was to continue yesterday.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the