Clik here to view.
Court official reads out names of deceased and how each one drowned, quoting from indictment of Francesco Schettino
The Italian court trying the captain of the Costa Concordia has heard grim details about how the 32 victims of the shipwreck drowned, some after diving or falling into the sea from the capsized cruise liner when lifeboats were no longer accessible.
A court official read out the names of the deceased passengers and crew members and described how each one died, quoting verbatim from the indictment of the Concordia's captain, Francesco Schettino.
Schettino was charged with manslaughter, causing the shipwreck off the Tuscan island of Giglio in January 2012 and abandoning ship with "hundreds of passengers and crew still aboard, unable to care for themselves or in need of co-ordination as the ship's tilt increased," the official said.
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 lived on the island.
Survivors described an evacuation that was so confused and delayed that by the time it got under way, lifeboats on one side of the Concordia could no longer be launched because the vessel was already badly listing.
The list of the victims began with a Frenchman, Francis Servel, who "not having found a place on the lifeboat, threw himself into the sea without a life vest", the court official read. He was "sucked toward the bottom of the whirlpool produced by the final flipping over on the right side of the ship, and then died due to asphyxiation".
Shortly after the tragedy, survivors recounted how Servel had given his wife his life vest because she didn't know how to swim, the court heard.
The bodies of victims No 31 and 32 were never found, but after a long, futile search of the ship's interior and the nearby waters they were declared dead.
One of them was a middle-aged Italian passenger, Maria Grazia Trecarichi, who with no place on a lifeboat and while waiting to be rescued wearing a life vest, "slid off into the sea because of the progressive tilt of the boat" and presumably drowned, the court official said.
No 32 was a Filipino waiter, Russel Terence Rebello. The court heard how the crewman "remained on the ship to carry out the lowering of the last lifeboats" and either fell or dove into the sea because of the Concordia's dramatic tilt, and was presumed to have drowned.
Other victims drowned aboard as violently swirling water rose up inside the ship. The court heard how some passengers were "sucked into a vortex" of water rushing into the Concordia when it capsized. This happened after the crew told them to go to the other side of the ship where lifeboats were being launched, and the passengers ended up trying to walk down a tilting corridor.
Wednesday was the first full day's hearing in the trial, which is being held in a theatre in the Tuscan town of Grosseto and is expected to last into next year. Last week it was postponed by a lawyers' strike.
Lawyers for Schettino said they were making a last-ditch attempt to reach a plea bargain in the case, which could result in a long prison sentence if the captain is convicted.
One of the lawyers, Donato Laino, said the defence wanted a deal in which Schettino pleaded guilty in exchange for a sentence of three years and five months. Schettino risks up to 20 years if found guilty of manslaughter and the other charges.
In May a different judge in pretrial hearings rejected Schettino's first bid for a plea bargain after the prosecution opposed it. But deals have been approved for five other defendants including the helmsman and other ship officers who were on the bridge of the ship with Schettino when it rammed the reef. The five included an official of the Italian cruise company Costa Crociere who was managing the crisis on land.
A judge is expected to rule on Saturday on those defendants' requests for lenient sentences, no longer than about two years. In Italy, sentences are often suspended in the cases of first-time offenders that result in punishments of a a few years or less.
That would leave Schettino, who depicts himself as an innocent scapegoat, as the only defendant risking a long sentence. Some of the 4,200 passengers and crew who were aboard the Concordia said Schettino should not be the only person tried.
"Frankly, I'm not angry with Schettino," said Gianluca Gabrielli, 33, from Rome. "I'm angry with the whole crew. They were smiling at the beginning, but when they realised that there was danger they escaped, abandoning us."