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TEHRAN, Jun 1 - The captain of a passenger cruiser that collided with a pleasure boat that capsized on the Danube, killing South Korean tourists on board, appeared in court in Budapest on Saturday as flood waters prevented attempts to reach the wreck.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - Rescuers were unable to reach the submerged boat on Friday, two days after it sank in the Hungarian capital with 28 people feared dead, nearly all of them from South Korea.
Water levels are expected to peak later on Saturday and the current depth of the river, just short of 6 meters (20 ft) should fall to about 4 meters by mid-week, the National Water Authority said in a statement.
That would leave the wreckage very close to the surface, according to sonar imaging, and should make it easier to search it for bodies and prepare to remove it from the riverbed, something divers have been unable to do under the current hostile conditions.
The Ukrainian captain, who denies having broken any rules or committing a criminal office, was taken into custody by Hungarian police on Thursday.
A Budapest municipal court sat on Saturday to decide whether to formally arrest the 64-year-old captain. Prosecutors want to keep him behind bars, while his lawyers say there is insufficient evidence to warrant doing so.
It is so far unclear what caused the accident, in which the 440-foot (135-metre) cruise ship hit and sank the smaller pleasure boat on Wednesday night.
The cruise ship's captain, identified by Hungarian police as C. Yuriy from Odessa, told the court that he deeply regretted being part of an accident that claimed so many lives, his lawyer told reporters during a break of the court hearing.
The captain was not at fault and there was not enough evidence to keep him locked up, the lawyer added.
"He committed no navigational error," Gabor Elo said. "A lot of data is missing from the procedure here, barring us from declaring who is at fault and to what extent. Was it one captain or the other, were there external circumstances?"
The court's deliberations will continue, with a decision and more details expected later on Saturday.
Source: Reuters
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