A South Korean court on Tuesday handed a 36-year prison sentence to the captain of a sunken ferry, saying he was professionally negligent and abandoned his passengers during the disaster in April that killed more than 300 people.
The chief engineer got 30 years, and 13 other crew members were sentenced to up to 20 years in prison, Yonhap news agency and other South Korean media reported, citing the Gwangju District Court in southern South Korea.
Capt. Lee Joon-seok and three other key crew members were earlier indicted by prosecutors on homicide and other charges. Eleven others faced less serious charges.
Lee has apologized for abandoning the passengers, but said he didn't know his action would lead to so many deaths.
The widely vilified Lee could have received a death sentence for the homicide charges. South Korea hasn't executed anyone since late 1997, though its courts occasionally issue the punishment.
Sewol ferry captain Lee Jun-Seok sits with other crew members inside a a court room in Gwangju at the start of the verdict proceedings on Tuesday. (Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)
Prosecutors and the crew members have one week to appeal, according to the court.
Court officials didn't immediately answer calls seeking confirmation.
The 15 crew members tasked with navigating the ferry Sewol have faced scathing public criticism because they escaped the sinking ship while many of their passengers were still trapped inside. A total of 476 people were aboard the ship and only 172 were rescued. Most of the dead were teenage students traveling to a resort island on a school trip.
Nearly seven months after the sinking, 295 bodies have been recovered but nine are still missing. South Korean officials said Tuesday they've ended searches for the missing because there was only a remote chance of finding more bodies while worries have grown over the safety of divers. Two civilian divers have died after falling unconscious during searches.
"As our loved ones remain trapped in the cold waters, this decision is unbearably painful for us. But we requested that the search operations be stopped" because of safety concerns, Min Dong-im, 36, the wife of a missing teacher, tearfully said at a televised news conference.
The Sewol's sinking, one of the country's deadliest disasters in decades, led to widespread national grief and soul-searching. Authorities blamed overloaded cargo, improper storage, untimely rescue efforts and corruption by the ship's owners that prevented enough spending on safety, along with the crew members' behaviour.
Last Friday, South Korean lawmakers approved plans to disband the coast guard and transfer its responsibilities to other government agencies. The coast guard was criticized for unprofessional, slow rescue efforts. Also last week, three relatives of the ship's billionaire owner were sentenced to up to three years in prison, about four months after the tycoon was found dead after he fled the law.
Prosecutors have accused the crew members of tacitly colluding to abandon the ship even though they knew that passengers would be trapped and killed after it sank. The defence in the trial has denied any collusion among the crew members, saying they were confused, injured and panicked.
Many student survivors have said they were repeatedly ordered over a loudspeaker to stay on the sinking ship and that they didn't remember any evacuation order being given before they helped each other flee the vessel.
South Korean coastguard officers look at bodies placed on their vessel, after they were recovered from a site where the capsized passenger ship Sewol sank in the sea off Jindo on April 20. (Issei Kato/Reuters)
Lee has said he issued an evacuation order for passengers. But he initially told reporters days after his arrest that he withheld the evacuation order because rescuers had yet to arrive and he feared for the passengers' safety in the cold, swift waters.
South Korea has spent months debating public safety issues that critics say were largely ignored while the country rose to an Asian economic power in the decades after the 1950-53 Korean War. But there have been a series of smaller deadly accidents since the sinking. In mid-October, for instance, 16 people watching an outdoor pop concert fell 20 metres to their deaths when a ventilation grate they were standing on collapsed.
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