00:00latest on the sinking of that luxury yacht of Sicily on Monday in which seven people died.
00:07In the last hour, prosecutors have held their first news conference and during that
00:12they confirmed that they have started a manslaughter and shipwreck investigation,
00:17but they stressed that it was in the very early stages and that they are not investigating anyone
00:23specifically at the moment. They also said that the yacht likely sank because of a downburst,
00:30not a water spout. Now this is a localised powerful wind that descends from a thunderstorm
00:36and spreads out unpredictability. Seven people were killed when the vessel went down on Monday.
00:42They included the British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his daughter Hannah. About 70 people
00:48were involved in the search operations each day since the yacht sank during a freak storm.
00:55Well here is the moment that those prosecutors announced the nature of their investigation.
01:05I'd like to also inform you officially that the Termini Imerese prosecution has opened a case
01:13hypothesising the crime of shipwreck and manslaughter, but we are only at the initial
01:20stage of the inquiry so far, so I'm going to confine myself to giving you only that
01:26information, but I have to emphasise that the development of the inquiry could actually be
01:33of any sort imaginable. Well here's what the prosecutors had to say about the weather
01:39conditions which hit the yacht. Have a listen. From the information which we have obtained,
01:46it's a downburst that we're talking about. No, the bodies were found in a cabin which were not
01:53theirs, but this doesn't give us any kind of certainty about what happened. We have no idea
01:58of the reasons for their all being found in the same cabin. The prosecutors also said at the
02:04moment the captain and the crew who were able to get off the vessel have no legal obligation
02:11at the moment to stay in Italy, but they do hope that they will comply with the investigation that
02:17is underway. The prosecutors also during that news conference asked how long it would take.
02:22Again, they didn't give any timeline on that. They were saying that the media
02:27wants things to happen quickly, but the investigation will take its time. Now we
02:32will be live in Sicily with our correspondent Bethany Bell who was in that news conference
02:37a little later in this hour, but also a reminder that we do have a live page up and running on the
02:43BBC News website and app with the very latest on what was said in detail from that news conference
02:50that those Italian prosecutors have held in the last hour. They also made it clear that this is
02:54going to be their only news conference that they hold while this investigation continues. As I said,
03:00you can get all of those details on the BBC News website and app at bbc.co.uk slash news
03:07and also on the news app.
Comments