A woman who turned out to be a security guard a stowaway on a New York-to-Paris flight in November claims he had previously tried to sneak into the security areas of other U.S. airports in order to travel without a ticket, prosecutors said Friday.
Svetlana Dali, 57, told investigators she had tried to travel for free at several domestic airports, Assistant US Attorney Theodora Brooks said at a bail hearing in federal court in Brooklyn; New Yorkthat he had described the crime of salary while waiting to flee from the government of Dali.
Theodora said those attempts included one in February at Miami International Airport, where Dali was turned away as he tried to sneak into a secure area by going through the customs area to get to departing flights.
The prosecutor made comments that suggested the bail conditions were strict enough to allow Dali, a Russian woman with permanent US residency, to attend her court hearings.
Dali, who wore a dark prison uniform and limped into court with a cane, spoke to his lawyer through a Russian interpreter. She had previously been treated and discharged from the hospital for treatment of an undetected nature. the host’s identity was on his wrist.
U.S. District Judge Joseph A. Marutollo agreed to release Dali with electronic monitoring and strict pretrial conditions, including a ban from all sports and a requirement that he live in a Philadelphia home and attend church services and submit to arson.
He also said he must undergo any mental health treatment required by pretrial services, the Brooklyn arm of federal court.
His court-appointed attorney, Michael Schneider, said his client — who has no criminal history after becoming a permanent U.S. resident for more than a decade — involved “what an aberrant act he could have been in a certain state of mind. That’s not going to happen.”
At Thursday’s hearing, Schneider said the charge against her was minor and that her offense was comparable to jumping a turnstile to enter the city’s subway system.
Theodora objected to the comparison in Friday’s hearing, saying it was a serious offense and “significantly national.” security of “ and very significant public security risks for obvious reasons”.
Schneider said in court Friday that the stowaway charge is unlikely to result in a prison sentence “unless he does something stupid.”
According to the criminal complaint, Dali flew to Paris as a stowaway on a Delta Airlines flight on November 26 before returning to Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday.
He said he got the document past Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers by hiding it among flight crews entering a special lane for airline employees who underwent security screening but never showed their ticket.
She then checked out the airline employees’ tickets to board a flight bound for Charles de Gaulle airport, only to be caught in violation of the cruise law once she was in the air, the complaint says.
When the flight arrived in Paris on November 27, she was met by French law enforcement authorities at the gate and detained before entering customs, she says.
Delta Airlines said in a statement that the review concluded that its security infrastructure was sound and that “a deviation from standard procedures was the cause of this incident.”
He said that he was careful to prevent such an interruption from happening again.
“Nothing is more important than safety and security,” the airline said.