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From The Times
March 18, 2004

Air crash father breaks his silence on stabbing

By Roger Boyes
A GRIEVING, distraught Russian architect has broken his silence and acknowledged that he might have killed an air traffic controller who was on duty during a mid-air collision over Lake Constance. The crash killed 71 people, among them the architect’s wife and his young son and daughter.

Vitaly Kaloyev, 48, has been held in a closely guarded Swiss psychiatric clinic since the stabbing of Peter Nielsen, the controller, last month.

Although his fingerprints were found on the knife, Mr Kaloyev had refused to talk about the incident. Now, according to the Zurich prosecutor, he admits that he went to Mr Nielsen’s home close to Zurich airport on February 24. He called to the controller, who was on his balcony, and demanded an apology.

Then, the prosecutor says, the architect “lost control and can remember no more about what happened — maybe he killed him”.

The controller bled to death in front of his wife and three children; the police arrested the Russian man the next day.

The collision on July 1, 2002, of the Russian Tupolev passenger aircraft — carrying mainly schoolchildren from Ufa in the Caucasus to a beach holiday in Spain — and a DHL cargo aircraft destroyed the peace of mind of both men. Since the funeral of his family, Mr Kaloyev has apparently been determined to find out the identity and address of the controller who was in the Zurich tower on the night of the collision. Mr Nielsen was unable to work again in the tower and needed long psychiatric counselling.

A German report — the aircraft crashed in German airspace and the victims were found in the south German town of Überlingen — will be issued on March 31. Investigators say that the controller ordered the pilot of the Russian jet to descend when its onboard collision alert equipment was demanding that it climb. The pilot followed the controller’s instructions and descended on the same flight path as the cargo aircraft.

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