Posted on 10/25/2005 4:52:57 PM PDT by MarshallDillon
ZURICH (Reuters) - A Russian who lost his wife and two children in Germany's worst aviation disaster went on trial in Switzerland on Tuesday for killing the air traffic controller he held responsible.
Vitaly Kaloyev, 48, lost his family when a DHL cargo plane and a Russian passenger jet collided in Swiss-controlled airspace over southern Germany on July 1, 2002.
He is charged with the premeditated killing of Peter Nielsen, the only air traffic controller on duty at the time.
Under Swiss law this charge ranks between murder and manslaughter and carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.
"I went to Nielsen as a father who loves his children, so he could see the photos of my dead children and next to them his kids, who were alive," Kaloyev told a packed courtroom in a monotone voice.
"Everyone can make mistakes, but these are my children," the trained architect and construction engineer said.
The Russian allegedly paid a detective to find out Nielsen's address and confronted him on the terrace of his home near Zurich airport on February 24, 2004, stabbing the Dane to death in front of his wife and three children.
LOST WILL TO LIVE
Looking gaunt but clean-shaven, Kaloyev spoke in Russian, telling the court that since the deaths of his wife and children, aged 10 and 4, he had lost the will to live.
When the judge asked what Kaloyev intended to do whenever he left prison, the Russian, dressed completely in black, replied: "I don't know how to live."
Kaloyev said when he confronted the air traffic controller, he tried to show Nielsen photographs of his children and wanted nothing more than an apology, but Nielsen rejected the gesture.
"I saw black and it was as if the bodies of my children turned in their grave," Kaloyev told the court.
He has made a partial confession already but argues the stabbing was not premeditated and that he cannot remember committing the crime.
"I don't contradict the fact that because of the evidence it looks like I killed (Nielsen), but I don't know if I did it," he said, admitting he had taken a knife to Nielsen's home.
Kaloyev, from North Ossetia, has been held in a Swiss jail since shortly after the crime. He was working in Spain at the time of the crash. A verdict was expected on Wednesday.
The 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.
Taking retribution to an entirely new level.
Awful!
He would have been better off if he had learned to forgive.
Can't find it within me to condemn this guy. If it was my wife and kids, I can't say I wouldn't do exactly the same thing.
This is a profoundly uncivilized thing to say. You should retract this.
Wow. I totally missed this story.
This event was the subject of a program on cable. The discovery channel I think. Maybe "Seconds From Disaster"
No. I totally remember the crash and the subsequent faulting of air traffic control. I just never heard about this vengeance killing of the controller. Which is surprising since I was on line almost every day last year with the on-going election.
If I remember the details correctly ... the controller had stepped away (unauthorized) from his radar screen and when he returned the two aircraft were on a collision heading. This occurred in the early AM hours when traffic was light and the controller, apparently left the screen to get coffee.
If 'premeditated killing' doesn't qualify, what does it take to rise to the level of 'murder'?
Can't find it within me to condemn this guy. If it was my wife and kids, I can't say I wouldn't do exactly the same thing.
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This is a profoundly uncivilized thing to say. You should retract this.
DITTO! My wife was run off the road, hit a bridge, rolled-down an embankment into a creek, found herself upside-down with water choking her until she and her mother were rescued by firemen. (Carrolton, Tx March 11, 1997) - The fiend left the scene. I HUNTED that bastard but never found out who it was even though he was leaving a boxed light industrial development from its only exit. My mother-in-law spent a month in Parkland Hospital, 10 days of which were in critical condition - had 8 operations, and left without full use of her right arm as well as chronic leg problems. She had no insurance beyond our $25K bodily injury coverage. METROPOLITAN doubled OUR car insurance and this was the first incident EVER for us. Had I found that cretin I would have rendered him the same condition as my wife's mom ~after I sued him.
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