Costa Concordia: Pre-trial hearing begins in Italy

Key information about the capsizing of the Costa Concordia cruise ship is being handed over to a panel of experts during a pre-trial hearing in Italy. At least 30 people are believed to have died when the ship struck rocks off the Tuscan coast on 13 January. Captain Francesco Schettino denies accusations of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship before all those aboard were evacuated. He will not attend the hearing, in the town of Grosseto, his lawyer says. Bruno Leporatti said it would be "unnecessary" for Mr Schettino to leave his home in the town of Meta di Sorrento, near Naples - where he is under house arrest - to attend the hearing. "Perhaps with this climate that has been created around him, [it would be] also a little dangerous for him," he said. Panel of experts Mr Schettino's brother-in-law has said that the captain is feeling both depressed and scared as he watches the inquiry unfold, and that the deaths of those who did not survive are weighing heavily upon him. His lawyer added that Mr Schettino was "stunned" by the accident. "He is a man who has feelings, who is pained over what happened," he said. Some 250 people have gathered in a theatre in Grosseto that has become the venue for the hearing, according to Italy's La Repubblica newspaper. The number is expected to swell further as 70 lawyers and their teams, representing survivors and relatives of victims, continue to arrive. No journalists or members of the public are allowed to attend. During the hearing, judges will question experts about the wrecking of the 114,500-tonne liner. Investigators who have been amassing evidence and testimony since the crash will hand it over to a court-appointed panel of experts made up of two naval experts and two academics. The BBC's Alan Johnston, in Rome, says these four will have the task of trying to reconstruct what happened and apportion degrees of culpability and blame. He says the process will probably take months. The ship, carrying 4,200 passengers and crew, had its hull ripped open when it hit rocks in darkness, just hours into a Mediterranean cruise. The company, part of the world's largest cruise operator Carnival Corp, has blamed Mr Schettino for the accident. Costa Cruises has said it has "complete faith in the judicial system" and has offered its "fullest collaboration" with the Italian authorities. The investigation will also look at the decisions and actions of Costa's vice-president, Manfred Ursprunger, and the head of its crisis unit, Roberto Ferrarini, with whom Mr Schettino was in contact during the evacuation. The ship's first officer, Ciro Ambrosio, is also under investigation. An Italian newspaper, Il Fatto Quotidiano, has published a leak of an account said to have been given by the second-in-command to the inquiry. In it, he says that Capt Schettino had explicitly taken sole command of the ship on the approach to the island. At the last moment, he realised he was too close and ordered a sharp turn away but it was too late and the ship hit the rocks. Speaking in Neapolitan dialect, the captain is then reported to have said: "I messed up", according to the newspaper. It reports that, according to Mr Ambrosio, Mr Schettino was reluctant to acknowledge the gravity of the crisis and was not truthful when the coastguard began demanding information. BBC