(Giglio Island, ITA) - The judge probing Italy's Costa Concordia disaster said the captain had shirked his duties, as divers on Wednesday halted the search for survivors on the unstable wreck.
Judge Valeria Montesarchio released Captain Francesco Schettino from police custody into house arrest but noted he had made no "serious attempt" to rejoin the stricken ship to supervise the evacuation of passengers Friday.
Rescuers were forced to suspend their search as the vessel shifted. Emergency workers fear it could slip from its resting place on a rocky shelf and slide into 100 metre (330 feet) deep waters.
But coastguard spokesman Filippo Marini told AFP that the "ship has stabilised," adding: "If it remains like that, the search will resume tomorrow (Thursday) morning."
The body of a Hungarian musician who worked aboard the vessel was identified as among the remains of five people taken from the wreck on the day before, the last bodies recovered before the search was suspended.
Hungary's Blikk newspaper said the musician, identified by authorities as Sandor Feher, had gone back onto the ship to retrieve his violin amid the chaos of the evacuation on Friday night.
A German woman, Gertrud Georgens, who was listed among the missing, is alive and had returned home in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, an Italian official said.
Divers, mountain rescue teams and marines have recovered 11 bodies from the turbid waters of the half-submerged hulk.
Another 20 passengers and crew are unaccounted for, their relatives huddled in hotels in the area anxiously waiting for news.
In his first comments on the disaster, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said during a visit to London: "Any such disaster could and should be avoided."
He added that the Italian government was trying to limit any damage to the environment from the ship, lying on its side off the Tuscan island of Giglio.
The 114,500 tonne, 17-deck behemoth was insured for 395 million euros ($507 million), industry sources told AFP on Wednesday.
An insurance industry source who did not want to be named said it is already possible to speak of the Costa Concordia in financial terms as "the biggest maritime disaster ever for the transport of passengers or goods."
Schettino -- described by one Italian newspaper as "the most hated man in Italy" -- faces years in prison if found guilty on charges of multiple manslaughter and abandoning ship.
The fact that other crew and officers stayed on board to try to evacuate the passengers refuted the captain's claim that he could not oversee the operation from the vessel, Italian media quoted the judge as saying after she questioned him at length on Tuesday.
She said Schettino had made no "serious attempt" to get back on board his ship, "or even close to it", after leaving during the evacuation.
She also noted that once he had left the ship, he remained for hours on the rocks with crew members watching the rescue operation.
Explaining her ruling, she said she did not think Schettino posed a flight risk but she did believe he could try to conceal evidence, which is why he needed to be under house arrest.
Schettino arrived at his home in Meta di Sorrento near the southern city of Naples around 2:00 am (0100 GMT) accompanied by police.
Inhabitants of the village closed ranks around the captain. They lashed out at photographers and cameramen gathered outside Schettino's home, accusing them of "media lynching" of the captain who "saved thousands of lives."
Under Italian law he will not be allowed to leave his home or communicate with anyone apart from his lawyer and very close family.
He has defended himself, saying his manoeuvre between the ship hitting rocks and before it keeled on to its side saved lives. He said he left the ship to coordinate evacuation efforts from the shore.
But in a dramatic port authority recording of a telephone exchange Friday, Schettino repeatedly told a port official who was urging him to get back on board the listing vessel that he could not get access, because another lifeboat was in the way.
The Corriere della Sera daily reported that Schettino told prosecutors that he was at the helm when disaster struck, but later fell into the sea and could not get back on board.
In the Livorno port authority recording, an increasingly strident port official berates Schettino, ordering him back on board so he could account for how many people were still on the vessel.
The official asks: "What are you doing? Are you abandoning the rescue?"
The dead identified so far include two French passengers, an Italian, a Spaniard and two crew, one Peruvian and the other Hungarian.
About 4,200 people were on board when the ship went down shortly after it had left a port near Rome for a seven-day Mediterranean cruise, and survivors have spoken of scenes of confusion and panic on board.
Max Iguera, a spokesman for the Dutch ship salvage and environmental disaster management company Smit, hired to pump out 2,380 tons of fuel from the ship's 20 reservoirs, said the operation would start in "a few days and ... last a few weeks."
