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Egypt court clears fire ferry owner of manslaughter


    CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian criminal court found the owner of a Red Sea ferry not guilty of manslaughter on Sunday over the deaths of more than 1,000 passengers when the vessel caught fire and sank in 2006, court sources said.

    Owner Mamdouh Ismail, a member of Egypt's upper house ofparliament at the time of the disaster, was tried in absentiabecause he left for Britain after the ferry disaster.

    The Al Salam 98 ferry caught fire and sank en route toEgypt from Saudi Arabia in February 2006, claiming the lives of1,034 of the roughly 1,400 people on board.

    The court also acquitted four other defendants, includingIsmail's son, but sentenced a sixth defendant, the captain ofanother ferry, to six months in prison for failing to takesteps to save survivors.

    The authorities first heard of the disaster many hoursafter the fire broke out. Ismail was accused of contributing tomanslaughter by failing to inform the authorities as soon as heheard of a problem aboard the ferry.

    Ismail said that no one on the vessel contacted either himor his company when the fire broke out.

    In 2006 a committee investigating the sinking widened theblame to include the state of Panama, under whose flag the boatwas sailing.

    A parliamentary report on the disaster blamed Ismail forserious violations of safety regulations. It said the ferry hadforged safety certificates, the life rafts and fireextinguishers were unfit for use and the ship did not haveenough winches to lower rafts into the sea.

    Egyptian authorities lifted a freeze on Ismail's assets in2006 and removed him and his family from the list of peoplebanned from travelling abroad after he paid about $57 million(28.6 million pounds) into a compensation fund for victims ofthe disaster.

    (Writing by Aziz El-Kaissouni, editing by Tim Pearce)