The captain of the ill-fated Costa Concordia, the cruise liner that ran aground off the Italian coast last year, has blamed the Indonesian helmsman for causing the accident that killed 32 people.
Francesco Schettino said that he wanted to slow the ship down, but the helmsman did not follow his orders correctly.
Schettino told a court in Grosseto, where the trial against him for manslaughter and abandoning ship resumed, that he steered in the wrong direction and the ship crashed," he said.
He accused the helmsman, Jacob Rusli Bin, of making a mistake that caused a fatal delay in changing the ship's course, news.com.au reports.
Captain Schettino, dubbed 'Italy's most hated man' by the tabloids, is accused of sailing too fast and too close to the island in a risky manoeuvre to 'salute' the residents.
His defence team asked permission for experts to go aboard the wreckage to determine whether technical problems contributed to the disaster, the report added.
