SWITZERLAND:A Russian man convicted of killing an air traffic controller linked to a 2002 mid-air collision was released from jail and was thought to be flying back to Russia late last night, Swiss media reported.
Vitaly Kaloyev, who lost his wife and children in the crash, had expected to be set free after a Swiss court last week upheld a ruling to cut his sentence to five years and three months, of which he had already served two-thirds.
Swiss teletext quoted a spokesman for the Russian embassy as saying Kaloyev would fly back last night.
Kaloyev stabbed to death air traffic controller Peter Nielsen, a Skyguide employee on duty the night of the collision between a cargo plane and a Russian charter transporting mostly Russian children on holiday.
The collision killed 71 people.
Kaloyev had initially been sentenced to eight years in jail for the killing, but the split verdict last week said 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 Mr Nielsen but had lost control of himself when the man refused to offer apologies after Kaloyev had shown him pictures of his children.
A Swiss court this year found four air traffic control managers guilty of manslaughter over the accident, and gave three of them a 12-month suspended sentence each and fined the fourth.
Four other employees were acquitted.
Defendants in the trial mainly blamed Mr Nielsen - who was alone on duty when the accident occurred - for poorly handling the events leading up to the crash in Swiss-controlled air space over the German town of Überlingen.
When the two planes collided, both the main and the backup telephone were out of order.
Additionally, radar software displaying flight co-ordinates was in a restricted mode and Mr Nielsen's only colleague was on a coffee break.