GROSSETO, Italy (AP) — The first hearing of the criminal
investigation into the Costa Concordia’s shipwreck was held in a theater
Saturday instead of a courthouse because of high demand, with angry
survivors seeking compensation, justice and the truth.
The judge
at the hearing assigned four experts to analyze the cruise ship’s data
recorder and ordered them to report their findings in July, confirming
predictions by Prosecutor Francesco Verusio that examination of the
data, as well as of conversations involving officers on the ship’s
bridge, could take months.
Prosecutors must decide whether to seek
a trial against the captain, other top officers and officials of
Italian cruise company Costa Crociere SpA, which is owned by Miami-based
Carnival Corp. Crucial to their decision could be what the experts
determine are such details as the Concordia’s velocity when it slammed
into a reef the night of Jan. 13 off Giglio island, its exact route and
what commands were given by whom and when.
Participants acknowledged that the search for truth and justice will be a long one.

"Today
is just the beginning," said Francesco Compagna, a lawyer for some
passengers and an injured Russian crew member, Irina Nazarova. "It is
the first day. We don’t expect quick things but we think that the
investigation must follow in all the directions," said the lawyer.
The
shipwreck killed 25 people, and seven other are missing and presumed
dead. Captain Francesco Schettino is accused of abandoning ship while
many of the 4,200 passengers and crew were still aboard during a
confused evacuation.
Prosecutors say the captain steered the ship too close to the island to show off the
vessel to islanders in a publicity stunt.
Survivor
Sergio Ammarota, among those who entered the hearing, said he wanted to
know "exactly how it (the crash) happened and why the captain … could
have carried out such a maneuver."
Compagna added that lawyers
are trying to determine "that it was not the first time that the Costa
boats used to go very close to the island."
Schettino has claimed
that the reef, which appears on many tourist maps, wasn’t on his
navigational charts. Schettino is also accused of abandoning ship while
many passengers and crew were still aboard, and struggling to escape.
Some of the passengers and crew jumped into the water and swam to shore
after the Concordia’s tilt made it impossible to lower all the life
boats.
Four experts were appointed by the court to examine the
data recorder. Lawyers emerging from the theater at the end of the
daylong hearing, which was closed to the general public and journalists,
said the judge ordered the experts to present their findings at a
hearing on July 21.
Costa Crociere has distanced itself from
Schettino, contending that he made an "unauthorized" maneuver that took
him perilously too close to the island. It has said that only once, in
August, was the cruise ship allowed to sail close to Giglio, because of a
special occasion on the island.
A lawyer for Schettino — who is
accused of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship —
slipped into the theater through a backdoor. Schettino, who is under
house arrest in his home near Naples, denies wrongdoing and didn’t
attend the hearing.
Schettino’s lawyer, Bruno Leporatti, later
told reporters that the captain expects that the black box exam will
"further confirm what he already told investigators."
Italian law
allows injured parties to attach civil suits to criminal cases, and at
least some of the survivors or lawyers or relatives of the victims who
came to the hearing are pressing requests for compensation.
"The
compensation that has been proposed to our clients absolutely is not in
line with the damage suffered," lawyer Michelina Suriano said. The
Italian news agency LaPresse quoted Suriano as saying her clients were
offered €11,000 (about $15,000) by the cruise company.
Much of Saturday’s hearing was devoted to just who will allowed by the court to
attach lawsuits to the case.
Among
those rebuffed were residents of Giglio, an island that lives off
tourism and where the wreck of the Concordia still rests on a rocky
stretch of sea bed just outside the main port. Their lawyer, Pier Paolo
Lucchesi, said the decision by Judge Valeria Montesarchio was tantamount
to dividing injured parties "into major league and minor league."
Environmental
groups were among others that were excluded. So far no major oil spill
from the wreck has occurred, but there are fears the wreckage, with its
refuse and other contents, will spoil the pristine waters off Giglio,
which host dolphins, wheels and other sea life.
The conversations
among Schettino and his officers, and with Italian coast guard
officials, are crucial in determining what happened, and why the captain
initially told the coast guard there was a blackout aboard, but didn’t
mention the collision.
Some conversations have already been made
public, including one played on Italian TV in which a coast guard
official based in Livorno, on the mainland, in a phone call repeatedly
orders a reluctant Schettino to get back on his ship and direct the
evacuation and rescue efforts.
Giulia Bongiorno, a lawyer for some
of the passengers, said she would press the court to order analyze of
recorded conversations from the time the Concordia left the port of
Civitavecchia a few hours before the collision and not just immediately
before and following the accident and evacuation.
She also is seeking examination of recorded conversation between the captain and his
officers on the bridge and the engine room.
Among
those present Saturday was the Italian cruise company itself. "We are
an injured party, we lost a ship," Marco De Luca, a lawyer for Costa
Crociere contended.
Another lawyer representing passengers —
Giuseppe Grammatico — is also a survivor. Grammatico told reporters that
some passengers, including himself, seized the initiative to be
evacuated, because orders weren’t forthcoming from the ship’s officials.
"Just
think, our lifeboat was lowered into the water because we insisted that
it be done without an order from the captain," Grammatico said.
Relatives of some of the missing, including Frenchwoman Mylene Litzler, were among
those attending the hearing.
Costa
Crociere again came under the spotlight earlier in the week when a fire
broke out in the generator room of the Costa Allegra, leaving the
cruise ship without power and adrift in waters known to be prowled by
pirates in the Indian Ocean. The ship arrived in the Seychelles after
three days under tow. There were no injuries.
"I can understand
the Costa Allegra’s fire," angry Concordia survivor Patrizia Bagnasco,
who came to the hearing, said. "But for the Concordia, we’re talking
about an unexplainable human error," LaPresse quoted her as saying.
Meanwhile,
in the waters off Giglio Saturday, work was begun to make an opening in
the wreckage to allow a salvage crew to enter the engine room and empty
the tanks holding the last fuel still inside the ship, authorities
said.
Italian navy divers finished inspecting elevators in the
forward part of the ship, as well as the Concordia’s theater and some
lodging areas for the ship’s crew, but the search yielded no bodies, the
agency said.
___
Frances D’Emilio reported from Rome.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.