Italy cruise wreck rescue halted as ship shifts

The judge investigating the Costa Concordia disaster said Wednesday the captain had shirked his responsibilities, as divers halted the search for survivors on the increasingly unstable wreck. Judge Valeria Montesarchio released captain Francesco Schettino from police custody into house arrest despite noting he made no "serious attempt" to rejoin the stricken vessel to take charge of evacuating the remaining passengers. Rescuers were forced to suspend their search Wednesday as the vessel shifted. Emergency workers fear that the ship could slip from its resting place on a rocky shelf and slip into deeper waters. "Instruments indicated the ship had moved, we are in the process of evaluating if it has found a new resting point to allow us to resume. For the moment we cannot even go near it," emergency services spokesman Luca Cari said. Divers, mountain rescue teams and marines have recovered 11 bodies from the turbid waters of the half-submerged hulk in the days since Friday night's disaster. Another 20 passengers and crewmen are unaccounted for, their relatives huddled in hotels in the area anxiously waiting for news of their loved ones. Schettino -- described by one Italian newspaper as "the most hated man in Italy" -- faces years in prison on charges of multiple manslaughter and abandoning ship. The fact that other crew and officers stayed on board to try to evacuate the passengers refuted the captain's claim that he could not oversee the operation from the vessel, Italian media quoted the judge as saying after she questioned him at length on Tuesday. She said Schettino had made no "serious attempt" to get back on board his ship, "or even close to it", after leaving during the evacuation. She also noted that once he had left the ship, he remained for hours on the rocks with crew members watching the rescue operation. Explaining her ruling, she said she did not think Schettino posed a flight risk but she did believe he could try to conceal evidence, which is why he needed to be under house arrest. Schettino arrived at his home in Meta di Sorrento near the southern city of Naples around 2:00 am (0100 GMT) accompanied by police officers. Under Italian law he will not be allowed to leave his home or communicate with anyone apart from his lawyer and very close family. He has defended himself, saying his manoeuvre between the ship hitting rocks and before it keeled on to its side saved lives. He said he left the ship to coordinate evacuation efforts from the shore. But in a dramatic port authority recording of a telephone exchange as the disaster unfolded late on Friday, Schettino repeatedly told a port official who was urging him to get back on board the listing vessel that he could not get access, because another lifeboat was in the way. "The captain defended his role on the direction of the ship after the collision, which in the captain's opinion saved hundreds if not thousands of lives," his lawyer Bruno Leporatti said after his lengthy questioning Tuesday. "The captain specified that he did not abandon ship," he said. The Corriere della Sera daily reported that Schettino told prosecutors that he was at the helm when disaster struck, but later fell into the sea and could not get back on board the listing vessel. Leporatti backed the claim, telling journalists: "The ship in that moment was tilted over by 90 degrees." He said the captain could not have returned on board without the help of a helicopter. According to investigators, the flooded engine rooms would have made it impossible for Schettino to navigate the 114,500-tonne ship, which drifted closer to a tiny port on Giglio before capsizing. In the Livorno port authority recording, an increasingly strident port official berates Schettino, ordering him back on board so he could account for how many people were still on the vessel. The official asks: "What are you doing? Are you abandoning the rescue?" Divers pulled five bodies from the wreckage on Tuesday after the Italian navy used explosives to blow access holes in the upturned hull. "The five victims are a woman and four men, who could be passengers but we are not sure, they are between 50 and 60 years old," said coastguard spokesman Filippo Marini. He said the victims were wearing life jackets. Earlier, officials had said that 12 Germans, six Italians, four French, two Americans, one Hungarian, one Indian and one Peruvian were missing. One of those unaccounted for is a five-year-old Italian girl and local shops and bars have been putting up her picture in their windows in the hope that she managed to survive and was lost on the mainland. The dead identified so far include two French passengers, an Italian, a Spaniard and one Peruvian crew member. About 4,200 people were on board when the ship went down shortly after it had left a port near Rome at the start of a seven-day Mediterranean cruise, and survivors have spoken of scenes of confusion and panic on board. Schettino has been widely criticised after reports emerged that he ordered an unauthorised sail-by close to the island, which was not on the cruise's itinerary, to please a crew member who hails from Giglio. "It was bravado, Schettino was showing off, clowning around, it was incredibly stupid. I would sentence him not once but 10 times," said a former captain who worked with the ship's owner, Costa Crociere. Costa Crociere, Europe's largest cruise operator, said earlier that the accident occurred as a result of an "inexplicable" error by the captain and distanced itself from the actions of their employee.