Russian convicted of killing air controller

By Pilar Wolfsteller

ZURICH (Reuters) – A Swiss court jailed a Russian for eight
years on Wednesday for the premeditated killing of an air
traffic controller he held responsible for a plane crash that
killed his family.

Vitaly Kaloyev’s wife and two children were killed when a
DHL cargo plane and a Russian passenger jet collided in
Swiss-controlled airspace over southern Germany on July 1,
2002.

By hiring a private detective, Kaloyev tracked down Peter
Nielsen, the only air traffic controller on duty at the time of
the crash, and confronted him at his home near Zurich airport,
stabbing him to death in front of his wife and three children.

Under Swiss law, premeditated killing ranks between murder
and manslaughter and carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. He
has already served over 600 days in Swiss jail.

“This is an extremely mild sentence and I will seriously
consider appealing. I cannot be content with eight years,” said
Zurich’s chief prosecutor. He had wanted 12 years.

“He killed his unknowing and defenseless victim with great
brutality in a horrible way,” the judge said.

Dressed in black, the native of North Ossetia refused to
stand for the ruling and showed no reaction to the verdict. As
he left the courtroom he turned to smile and wave at his
supporters, including the Russian region’s president.

Nielsen’s father and sister were in court but declined to
comment on the ruling.

Kaloyev’s defense team is likely to launch an appeal, said
Genrikh Padva, whose law firm took part in Kaloyev’s defense.

“We were counting on the punishment being less severe as he
came to this crime through such heavy torment,” Interfax news
agency quoted Padva as saying.

Russia plans to ask Switzerland to hand Kaloyev, 48, over
to Russia to serve his prison term there, Interfax news agency
quoted a Justice Ministry official as saying on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, a haggard-looking Kaloyev had told the court
that since the deaths of his wife and children, aged 10 and 4,
he had lost the will to live. He said repeatedly he had not
intended to kill anyone, saying all he wanted was an apology.

The mid-air collision over the German village of
Ueberlingen, close to the Swiss border, killed 69 people,
mostly children, traveling on a Bashkirian Airlines flight from
Moscow to Barcelona. Two DHL pilots also died.

Nielsen, 36 when he died, had been alerted to the
intersecting flight paths just 44 seconds before the crash.

He told the pilot of the Russian Tupolev to descend to
avoid a collision, even though early-warning instruments aboard
the plane had told the pilots to climb.

The DHL Boeing 757′s automatic anti-collision system also
instructed the pilots to descend to the same level, where the
Boeing’s tail fin sliced open the passenger jet. Both aircraft
disappeared from radar screens 15 seconds later.