Associated Press

Moscow, January 6

A Siberian court today convicted two pilots charged in the 2002 helicopter crash that killed Russian military hero and regional governor Alexander Lebed, sentencing one to four years of internal exile and handing the other a three-year suspended sentence.

The Krasnoyarsk Territorial Court found the pilots guilty of aviation safety violations in the April 2002 crash that killed Krasnoyarsk governor Lebed and seven other people when the Mi-8 helicopter smashed into a snowy Siberian hillside after hitting or maneuvering to avoid a power line in a thick fog. Twelve people survived on board, however, survived the crash.

One of the pilots, Takhir Akhmerov, was sentenced to four years of internal exile in a special punitive settlement and forbidden from any work involving transporting passengers for three years after that, the Interfax news agency reported.

The other, Alexei Kurilovich, received a three-year suspended sentence and two years on parole, Interfax reported.

Reading out the verdict on state-run Rossiya television, judge Sergei Afanasyev said the pilots could have prevented the accident and were guilty of "criminal thoughtlessness." Prosecutors had asked the court to sentence Akhmerov to six years of internal exile and Kurilovich to five years.