VLADIKAVKAZ, March 4, 2004 (RIA Novosti correspondent Vladimir Gutnov) - Preparations are being made in North Ossetia to establish a fund of legal defence for North Ossetia resident Vitaly Kaloyev, who is charged with the murder of a Skyguide air traffic controller in Switzerland. The republic's parliament is discussing legal aspects of the move.
"Helping a person in trouble is a tradition and the only possible way of conduct for Ossetins. The establishment of the fund of support for Vitaly Kaloyev is, therefore, quite a possible prospect," Fatima Khabalova, in charge of the parliament's information and analytical department, told RIA Novosti.
The air traffic controller was stabbed to death at his home in the Kloten suburb of Zurich last week. Mr Kaloyev was arrested the next day in a Kloten hotel. The man lost his wife, daughter and son in the July 2002 air crash in airspace over southern Germany controlled by Skyguide. The slain controller was on duty when Russia's Tu-154 passenger airliner and a Boeing-747 cargo plane collided, and is blamed for the accident.
