Crash avenger given hero's welcome

MOSCOW: A man convicted of killing an air traffic controller linked to a 2002 mid-air collision was given a hero’s welcome as “a real human” by a pro-Kremlin group when he returned to Russia from a Swiss jail.

Vitaly Kaloyev, who lost his wife and children in the crash, was set free and immediately flew to Moscow, after last week’s ruling by a Swiss court to cut his sentence to five years and three months, of which he had served two-thirds.

Kaloyev stabbed to death Swiss air traffic controller Peter Nielsen, who was on duty the night of the collision between a cargo plane and a Russian charter flight transporting mostly Russian children on holiday that killed 71 people.

“I want to express my great thanks to all the citizens of Russia, to the Russian President for the strong support they extended to me,” Kaloyev told dozens of journalists on his arrival at Domodedovo Airport, outside Moscow.

He was met by relatives whohad come from his native South Ossetia, in the northern Caucasus, but outside hundreds of youths from the pro-Kremlin Nashi movement formed a chain along a motorway leading to Moscow. “Kaloyev is our man,” they chanted in chorus, braving frosty wind and snow. The posters they held read: “You are a real human being!”

Kaloyev had initially been sentenced to eight years in jail for the killing, but the split verdict said last week he could not be held accountable for his action.

One of the judges told the media that Kaloyev did not come to Switzerland intending to kill Nielsen but had lost control of himself when the man refused to offer apologies after Kaloyev hadshown him pictures of his children.

A Swiss court this year found four air traffic control managers guilty of manslaughter over the accident, giving three of them 12-month suspended sentences each and fining the fourth. Four other employees were acquitted.

Defendants in the trial mainly blamed Nielsen – who was alone on duty on the night of theaccident – for poorly handling the events leading up to the crash in Swiss-controlled air space over the German town of Ueberlingen.

When the two planes collided, both the main and the back-up phone were out of order, radar software displaying flight co-ordinates was in a restricted mode and Nielsen’s only colleague was on a coffee break.

Source :Reuters