A woman who evaded security as a stowaway on a flight from New York to Paris in November claims she had previously tried to sneak into secure areas at other U.S. airports in an attempt to travel without a ticket. Prosecutors announced Friday.
Svetlana Dali, 57, told investigators she tried to get free travel at multiple airports around the country, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brooke Theodora said during a bail hearing in federal court in Brooklyn, New York. , expressed the government’s concern that Dali might flee. while awaiting trial on smuggling charges.
Those attempts included one at Miami International Airport last February, Theodora said, in which Dali forced his way through the customs area to gain access to a secure location in order to reach a departing flight. He said he tried to do so but was refused.
In his remarks, prosecutors called for bail conditions to be sufficiently strict to ensure that Dali, an unemployed Russian woman who is a permanent resident of the United States, can attend court hearings.
Dali, wearing a brown prison uniform and limping into the courtroom with a cane, spoke to his lawyer through a Russian interpreter. Previously, she had been discharged from the hospital after undergoing undisclosed treatment. Her hospital identification card was on her wrist.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph A. Martolo ordered him to undergo a strict pre-trial, including electronic monitoring, banning him from all airports, living in the home of a man he met at a church function in Philadelphia, and complying with a curfew. He agreed to release Dali with certain conditions.
He also told her she must receive mental health treatment required by the Division of Pretrial Services, a division of Brooklyn federal court.
Her public defender, Michael Schneider, said his client, who has been a permanent resident of the U.S. for more than 10 years and has no criminal record, engaged in “conduct that may have been abnormal given her particular mental health condition.” He said he had done so. That won’t happen in the future. ”
At Thursday’s hearing, Schneider said the charges against her were minor and that her crime was comparable to jumping through turnstiles to get into the city’s subways.
Theodora pushed back against that comparison during Friday’s hearing, saying the crime was serious and posed “a very serious national security concern and a very serious public safety risk for obvious reasons.” Ta.
Schneider said in court Friday that a prison sentence for the smuggling charge was unlikely “unless she does something stupid.”
According to the criminal complaint, Dali flew to Paris as a stowaway on a Delta flight on Nov. 26 and returned to Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday.
According to the documents, she evaded TSA agents by hiding among the flight attendants in the airline employee lane and went through security screening, but was not asked to show her ticket.
She then boarded a flight to Charles de Gaulle Airport to avoid airline employees scanning her ticket, but was caught illegally boarding the plane after it took off. The complaint states.
When the flight arrived in Paris on November 27, French law enforcement met her at the gate and detained her before entering customs.
Delta Air Lines said in a statement that an investigation concluded the airline’s security infrastructure was sound and that “deviations from standard procedures were the root cause of this incident.”
It said it is taking steps to ensure such violations do not happen again.
“Nothing is more important than safety and security,” the airline said.
