Fabiola Russo as she appears on the cover of the Italian magazine Oggi.

25 JAN: The wife of Costa Concordia captain Francesco Schettino has defended her husband in an Italian magazine interview, saying he is "not a monster".

Fabiola Russo spoke out as calls increased for prosecutors to widen their probe into the Costa Concordia luxury liner disaster, in which 16 people are confirmed dead and another 16 people still missing.

In an interview with glossy Italian weekly Oggi, Mrs Russo said there was a witch-hunt against her husband, who is under investigation for alleged multiple manslaughter, abandoning ship and causing a shipwreck.

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Captain Schettino is currently under house arrest.

His wife, who lives with him and their 17-year-old daughter near Naples, said: "My husband is not a monster. He was always the go-to guy for the crew.

"This is a witch hunt. Everyone is out to get my husband. The media has made out he is to blame.

"He loves ships, he knows all about them and has never stopped studying them, to learn what they are capable of and what their limits are.

"He is decisive, stable and lucid. He analyses situations, understands them and then acts.

Mrs Russo admits that her husband sometimes "seems arrogant because he puts himself above the people he is speaking to and often tells them to shut up".

But she says he knows how to do his job, though sometimes even those who know how to do their job can make mistakes - "if he did make a mistake".

The interview came as Beniamino Deidda, prosecutor general of Tuscany, called for the investigation into the grounding to focus also on Concordia’s owners, Costa Cruises.