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Russian convicted of killing air controller

Posted on: Wednesday, 26 October 2005, 12:05 CDT

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.

Source: REUTERS

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