now let's move over to the legal perspective the captain of the bigger
cruise liner that appears to have collided into the mermaid or the hobble
Ayane has been arrested and currently remains under custody how can we expect
a legal proceedings to play out Klaus luta is a master deep ocean ship
captain and maritime attorney he joins us live via Skype from DC captain luta
thank you for joining us conn-young thank you for having me come
some Anita thank you now first of all let's try to make sense out of the
latest footage that's been released one that shows the last few minutes leading
up to the collision one that's got some to speculate a possible hit and run at
Empire by the bigger cruise liner what do you make of the situation I mean how
do you think the accident developed I think hearing a headline like that is
somewhat inflammatory it's probably great for the news headlines but not
necessarily good for the captains trial if you look at the video footage it's
clear that the larger cruise vessel is trying to traverse under the bridge from
what I can tell the smaller boat got in front of it and with the nature of the
currents in that river things were flowing so fast you know it's difficult
to maneuver a large vessel and I have a feeling that somehow the currents
managed just to grab the smaller vessel and make something happen there based on
other judicial precedents what could this 64 year-old I believe Ukrainian
captain be charged of I mean we expect the case to be a court battle
considering that the captain has been denying having broken any rules or
having committed a criminal offense what kind of a sentencing if at all can we
expect well that'll remain to be seen within the Hungarian courts and
Hungarian law but unfortunately we live in this era right now we're masters of
vessels at sea and on the rivers suffer criminal penalties whenever an incident
like this occurs now they have to detain the Ukrainian master he's an experienced
captain and they have to research what happened and get to the bottom of the
facts but unfortunately you know when they're when deaths are involved there's
a strong possibility that he could face something similar to what we call in the
states a manslaughter charge a manslaughter charge now over in Europe
um what what kind of sentencing would that entail that depends entirely on the
European Union and the Hungarian courts and what they determine the negligence
level to rise to unfortunately it probably is not necessarily fair if you
take airline incidents for an example when an airplane crashes they don't put
the captain the surviving captain's in jail or when there's an airline incident
they don't put the pilots in jail what they do is research what happens that
they can better the industry and make an improvement overall and unfortunately
the way this works the captains are criminalized and don't get an
opportunity to really share honest feedback about the incident so we can't
necessarily learn all we could from it it's possible this could be a long
drawn-out trial it depends what the Hungarian courts want to do in this
captain unfortunately could face jail time hopefully that's not the case
hopefully we we can exonerate him but it's it's unlikely given the pattern of
these things absolutely now the accident itself as well as the
search efforts underway and make this case a multinational one of course now
we'll just complicate the case I mean how do you expect the legal proceedings
to unfold from here and out I think it does complicate things you have a river
running through multiple countries you have their Ukrainian master a Hungarian
vessel a another pleasure craft that was built in the Soviet Union so you have
all these countries involved some of which are involved in the European Union
and the International Maritime Organization might have a say in this
they don't necessarily have any sort of enforcement powers or governing powers
but this potentially could be considered an international waterway although it is
inland technically in the IMO does not have a reach there but and and the fact
that South Korean citizens have lost their lives certainly makes us in its
international incident absolutely we'll have to wait and see how that plays out
closer to master a deep ocean ship captain in a maritime attorney many
thanks for sharing your insights sir thank you