SWITZERLAND: A Russian man who lost his family in a mid-air collision over Lake Constance in July 2002 went on trial in Zürich yesterday charged with killing the air traffic controller on duty at the time.
Vitalij Kaloyev, a construction engineer from the Russian region of North Ossetia, is charged with stabbing Peter Nielsen to death outside his Zurich apartment on the evening of February 24th, 2004. He told the court yesterday how he had lost the will to live since he lost his wife and two children aged 10 and 4.
"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 children who were alive," said Mr Kaloyev (48), in Russian, to the Zurich court.
Seventy-one people, including 45 Russian children, died on the night of July 1st, 2002, when a Russian airliner collided with a DHL cargo aircraft over the southern German town of Überlingen. Both planes were flying on a collision course of 36,000 feet when Mr Nielsen was alerted, 44 seconds before impact.
Mr Nielsen, a 36-year old Dane, immediately instructed the Russian plane to descend, unaware that the DHL plane's anti-collision system had already instructed its pilot to do the same. The two vanished from Mr Nielsen's radar screen 15 seconds later, at 11:35pm.
Investigators found last year that Mr Nielsen wasn't informed that an early-warning system had been switched off for repairs. The control room was understaffed, and a second controller supposed to be on duty was asleep. A German controller who had spotted the collision earlier was unable to get through to Mr Nielsen on the telephone.
Mr Kaloyev's wife and children were flying to visit him in Barcelona, where he had been working on a building project. They took the fated Bashkirian Airlines charter flight from Moscow after their own flight was overbooked.
Mr Kaloyev, the first relative at the scene, told Swiss authorities that something "happened" in his head when he received a compensation letter which he understood was the final word on the matter: €39,000 for a dead spouse, €32,000 for a dead child.
He returned to Switzerland in February 2004 to seek an apology and admitted it was "likely" that he had killed Mr Nielsen, although his defence will argue that he was not in a fit state of mind at the time and is pushing for a manslaughter conviction.
Prosecution lawyers say the killing was premeditated and want an "intentional killing" conviction that carries a 20-year maximum sentence.
They say Mr Kaloyev asked a private detective months before the killing to find photographs of Mr Nielsen and that he bought a knife similar to the murder weapon on the day of the killing in the nearby airport.
The case continues.