Air traffic controller's killer in prison

A Russian man has been found guilty of stabbing and killing a Danish air traffic controller in Switzerland last year, apparently to avenge his family's death.

A court in Zurich sentenced the man, Vitalij Kalojev, 49, to eight years in prison on Wednesday.

Kalojev was arrested shortly after the murder of Peter Nielsen, a 36-year-old Danish air traffic controller who was on duty when 71 people, including Kalojev's wife and two children, died in a mid-air collision in July 2002.

Nielsen, who was stabbed to death in front of his children on the doorstep of his family home in Zurich, had been in sole charge of that city's air traffic when a plane carrying 45 Russian children collided with a DHL cargo jet.

The Swiss prosecutor had sought a 12-year sentence for Kalojev, describing the attack as 'the butchering of a helpless offer, prompted by pure hatred'. Kalojev went hunting for Nielsen carrying a long knife.

The Russian's defence attorney demanded that his punishment should be limited to three years in prison, as he had not planned to kill Nielsen.

The court came to the conclusion that Kalojev had planned the murder, but that he had done so 'under violent emotional strain'. While that did not excuse his crime, it explained some of the personality changes he had shown.

A psychiatrist found that Kalojev had suffered a personality disorder after he lost his wife and two young children in the crash.

Kalojev himself explained to the court that all he ever wanted was to receive an apology from Skyguide, the company Nielsen worked for, which was responsible for controlling air traffic at the airport.

'All I wanted was an apology from Skyguide,' he said. 'I didn't wish for anyone to go to prison, since that had would not have brought my family back to me.'

Kalojev said that after Skyguide's management rejected his request, he had decided to seek Nielsen out and get him to apologise.

'I wanted to confront the controller as a father who loved his children. I wanted him to see photographs of my beloved ones, so he could understand my feelings and ask for forgiveness.'

Kalojev said, however, that he had felt rejected by Nielsen, who at the time was still suffering from a mental breakdown after the crash. Kalojev said everything had gone black. Evidence suggested that he had stabbed Nielsen and caused yet another tragedy, he admitted.

Kalojev's most frequently used term during the interrogation was 'apology', but he dismissed any attempts from the judge, the prosecutor, or even his own defence attorney, to ask Nielsen's family to forgive him.

After thirteen hours of negotiations, however, Nielsen's killer acceded and apologised to the family.

Although formal charges were never brought against Nielsen, his actions were criticised in a report into the 2002 disaster. Investigators discovered that the controller had told the Russian plane to descend - even though its onboard warning equipment instructed it to climb. The pilot followed the controller's instructions and collided with the DHL plane that was descending in accordance with its own collision-avoidance equipment.

Nielsen, who spoke both German and English, was on duty together with a Swiss colleague on the night of the crash. However, at the time of the accident, the Danish man was in sole control of operations while his colleague took a coffee break.

The official investigation later criticised the fact that just one controller was responsible for the entire traffic in the Zurich airspace, monitoring two frequencies and two radarscopes. Work was also being carried out on the radar system and the telephone net, meaning that the main telephone line was switched off.