[cobaltoxide]

"In 2004, Peter Nielsen, the air traffic controller on duty at the time of the collision, was murdered in an apparent act of revenge by Vitaly Kaloyev, a Russian citizen whose wife and two children had been killed in the accident."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_c...

Jesus

Also:

"On 8 November 2007, Kaloyev was released from prison on parole after having served two-thirds of his sentence, a total of three and a half years."

"Returning to his home in North Ossetian city of Vladikavkaz, Kaloyev was met with enthusiastic crowds who cheered him as a hero."

[olliej]

Yup, murdered the only person involved in the collision that didn't actually cause it. Celebrated as a hero because "honor" is achieved by murdering an unarmed man who didn't kill your family, rather than the people in charge of the airline and ATC company that did. After all honor is defined by many as "murdering someone, regardless of what they did".

[zarzavat]

Not to justify the murder or anything, but I don’t think that Nielsen can be said to have zero responsibility. He voluntarily worked in such an unsafe environment.

Ultimately if you work in a safety-critical field and you don’t speak up when something is very wrong, then you are just as responsible as anyone else.

Plugging away at your job while maintenance people disconnect the phones from ATC is negligent inaction. Without a working phone line the ATC was clearly offline in a very literal sense and he should have recognized that and either passed the responsibilities to another ATC and/or closed the airspace.

[avar]

The first line in the "causes" section of the official accident investigation blames ATC.

The murder of Nielsen is a tragedy, but that doesn't mean he wasn't responsible.

[MattRix]

The article covers this at some length.