NOT HIS FAULT Francesco Schettino fell into the lifeboat

Posted on 05/06/2016 | About Giglio, Italy

The disgraced captain of the 2012 ill-fated Costa Concordia was sentenced to 16 years and one month in prison for his responsibility in the wreckage off the coast of Isola del Giglio in Italy. Last week Francesco Schettino, who has not yet served any time began proceedings in an appeal to overturn his manslaughter conviction. The prosecution is also appealing last year’s sentence, saying that the skipper should have been given 26 years.

Schettino says he has been made a scapegoat for the disaster that killed 32 people. During the trial he was accused of showing off to a nightclub dancer when steered the ship too close to the island and struck a rock formation on the sea floor. 

He was convicted of multiple manslaughter, causing a maritime accident and of leaving his boat before all passengers and crew had been evacuated, in breach the sailors' code of conduct. 

The Italian justice system allows a defendant to automatically appeal a conviction and if he loses this one, he can appeal to the Court of Cassation, the country’s highest court. 

In February 2015, he was sentenced to 10 years for multiple manslaughter, five years for causing the shipwreck and one year for abandoning his passengers.

"I will fight for ever to prove that I did not abandon the Costa Concordia," he vowed after his conviction, seemingly unaware that part of the conviction only accounted for one year of his sentence. 

Schettino claims that he had not abandoned the ship while passengers were still on board, but rather had fallen into a lifeboat. 

His lawyers said, "We will ask that the responsibility of all the protagonists in this affair be redefined, not just that of our client." 

Donato Laino, one of Schettino's advocates suggested that the blame be with the ship's owner, Costa Crociere, its Indonesian helmsman and the Italian coastguard. 

Costa Crociere, the company that owned the ship paid a €1 ($ 1.46) million fine. 

Five other employees, including the helmsman (who was steering the ship and said he didn’t understand Schettino’s command to change the course of the ship in time), were handed prison sentences ranging from 18 months to two years and 10 months in plea bargains. 

The region of Tuscany and the island of Giglio were awarded €300,000 ($440,000) each for damage done to the sea bed and tourism. 

Survivors of the disaster who had rejected Costa's initial compensation offer and become civil parties in the Schettino case were awarded an average of €30,000 ($44,000) each. Schettino was also banned from public office for life and from working as a ship captain for five years.