Eight Swiss air traffic control company employees have been charged with negligent homicide in a 2002 airliner collision that killed 71 people over southern Germany, a prosecutor said Monday.
All of the employees, who were not named, deny any responsibility for the collision of a Russian airliner and a cargo plane in the airspace supervised by the Skyguide air navigation service, said Winterthur District Attorney Bernhard Hecht said in a statement.
The victims included 45 Russian schoolchildren headed for a vacation in Spain.
Hecht said the eight were charged in the District Court of Buelach on Friday. They also have been charged with negligent disruption of public transportation.
Hecht said the eight should be given suspended sentences of between 6 and 15 months in jail.
The statement said the defendants were accused of organizational shortcomings that led to a single air traffic controller being left in charge of the area where the crash occurred on July 1, 2002, and with providing insufficient information to him about technical work in progress that decisively affected the communications and radar systems.
"In the opinion of the district attorney, the failures to carry out their duties led to the collision and crash of the two aircraft," the statement said.
The charges were brought after an extensive investigation in cooperation with the district attorney of Constance, Germany, Zurich cantonal police and the Swiss Office for Aircraft Accident Investigations, the statement said.
Patrick Herr, a spokesman for Skyguide, which is almost completely owned by the Swiss government, said the firm was providing legal and psychological support for the accused and that their employment status was unchanged.
Herr said the firm had improved its procedures since the accident.
German investigators concluded in May 2004 that there were a series of failings at the Swiss control center. But it also said confusing flying rules led the crew of the Russian passenger jet to make the incorrect decisions as the two planes sped toward each other.
Last year a Swiss court sentenced Russian architect Vitaly Kaloyev to eight years in prison for the premeditated homicide of the air traffic controller who was on duty at the time of the collision in which Kaloyev's wife and children were killed.
Kaloyev, 49, acknowledged that he must have stabbed Peter Nielsen to death in February 2004, but said he could not remember the slaying.
The Danish-born Nielsen, 36, died of multiple stab wounds in front of his wife in his back yard.
Nielsen gave only 44 seconds of warning to a Bashkirian Airlines plane and a DHL cargo aircraft that they were getting too close to each other. He told the Russian plane to descend - sending the jetliner straight into the cargo jet.
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