Four officials imprisoned for SAS-crash in Linate

From www.independent.co.uk :

Four officials imprisoned for Italy's worst aircraft crash

By Peter Popham in Rome
17 April 2004


A court in Milan convicted four airport officials of manslaughter and
negligence yesterday after Italy's worst aircraft disaster, in which
118 people died when a Danish airliner and a Cessna executive jet
collided on the runway at Milan's Linate airport in October 2001.

The crash occurred in morning fog after one of the air traffic
controllers gave the Cessna's pilot permission to cross the runway
down which the SAS MD-87 jet was already thundering prior to take off.
The airport's ground radar had been out of action and the first that
the controllers knew of the crash was a succession of bangs.

In tapes of exchanges between controllers broadcast on Italian
television earlier this month, one of them dismissed the bangs as
"nothing out of the ordinary". Another joked that it sounded like
their shift leader's head being smashed against the control tower
window. All passengers and crew in both planes died, as well as four
baggage handlers, when the Swedish plane ploughed into a baggage
handling building.

The judges found all four defendants guilty and handed down stiff
sentences of between six-and-a-half and eight years. Seven more
defendants have yet to be sentenced.

As the verdicts were read out, the wife of one man killed in the
accident screamed from the gallery: "On your knees, on your knees,
assassins!"

Sandro Gualano, chief executive of Italy's air traffic control agency
at the time of the crash, and Francesco Federico, in charge of Milan's
two airports, were both handed down sentences of six years.

Vincenzo Fusco, the director of Linate airport, and Paolo Zacchetti,
an air traffic controller, were both sentenced to eight years.
Prosecutors had only requested a three-year sentence for Zacchetti,
and his lawyer said he would appeal.

Italy's airports have been at the centre of numerous scandals in
recent years, including systematic theft by baggage handlers and a
scam at Milan's second airport, Malpensa, in which airport staff
smuggled illegal immigrants into Italy through the airport.

Yesterday, the president of the association of families of victims of
the Linate crash, Paolo Pettinaroli, one of whose sons died, said:
"Italian justice has triumphed. It comes out of such a difficult trial
with its head held high."