Russian on trial for killing air controller

ZURICH - A Russian who lost his wife and two children in Germany's worst aviation disaster has gone on trial in Switzerland 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.

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 later today.

The collision over the German village of Ueberlingen, close to the Swiss border, killed 69 people, mostly children, travelling 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.

- REUTERS