Macedonia Court Launches Boat Capsize Trial

At today's opening hearing, the captain of the ship, Sotir Filevski, began his testimony. He expressed his condolences for the victims of the sinking and regret for the tragedy. "It would have been better if I had died instead of all those people," Filevski told the court.

Filevski will be charged with manslaughter. His defence insists that he is innocent and that the inspector who checked his ship, Branko Baic, did not tell him of any irregularities with the vessel.

According to the defence, Baic, a Croatian citizen, conducted a 15-minute inspection without any instruments and gave him a certificate that the ship was safe to sail. Baic is also charged in the case.

The trial for the Ilinden boat disaster case has been postponed twice, most recently on January 18 when Baic again failed to appear in court. Baic is expected to be tried in absentia if he fails to show up at today's hearing.

Baic was employed as a technical expert on the sunken vessel, and is the representative of the German company Lloyd which issued the certificates ensuring the seaworthiness of the Ilinden only four months before the tragedy occurred. He is believed to be "abroad" and his whereabouts are unknown, media reports said.

At the time of the tragedy, there were 54 Bulgarian tourists and three crew members on board. The tourists were going on a trip to the Monastery of Saint Naum, situated south of the city of Ohrid. Ilinden was 200 metres from shore when it sank into the deepest lake in the region, and a popular Balkans tourist attraction.

According to the official documents, the vessel had the capacity to carry 43 people.

The cause of the sinking has been variously attributed to overloading, a torn balancing rope, incorrect distribution of the people on board, and mistakes by the captain.

The Bulgarian organiser of the ill-fated trip to Ohrid a year ago, Boryana Georgieva, has already been sentenced by a court in Bulgaria for carrying out business activities in violation of the Tourism Act. She was ordered to pay a fine of BGN 4,500 (€2,250), and was banned from commercial activity for two years.