Stowaway who boarded New York-to-Paris flight claims she sought asylum in France

Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A Russian woman with permanent U.S. residency who was returned to the United States after authorities said she sneaked on board a flight from New York to Paris made her first appearance in court Thursday, claiming she has been abused.

Svetlana Dali, wearing jeans, seemed agitated as she spoke through a Russian interpreter to her attorney during a brief appearance before a Brooklyn magistrate judge.

Her lawyer, Michael Schneider, said she claims she was poisoned after arriving in Paris and then was returned to the United States despite requesting asylum there.

She also claimed through Schneider that her treatment at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn amounted to torture after she was placed in a “very cold” room where she felt sick and eventually lost consciousness.

“She believes if she’s staying at the MDC, her life will be in danger,” Schneider said.

When he told Magistrate Judge Robert M. Levy that she was requesting a spectrometer be used to test her blood and determine if she had been poisoned, the judge responded that he’s “not sure” the device was in the jail’s commissary.

She will be housed in the federal lockup a second night after lawyers agreed to postpone a bail hearing until Friday so enough information could be gathered to create a bail package.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brooke Theodora said the government’s chief concern was that Dali was a risk of flight.

She did not protest when Schneider said the single federal stowaway charge she faced was a “minor charge” comparable to being arrested for jumping a turnstyle to enter the city’s subway system.

A criminal complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court said Dali admitted to an FBI agent who interviewed her when she returned to Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday that she flew to Paris as a stowaway on a Delta Air Lines flight on Nov. 26.

The complaint said airport surveillance footage showed that she was initially rebuffed by a Transportation Security Administration official because she lacked a boarding pass when she first tried to enter Kennedy’s Terminal 4.

Five minutes later, she successfully accessed the security screening machines without a boarding pass by entering a special lane for airline employees at the same time that a large Air Europa flight crew walked through, the complaint said.

It said she got onto the Delta flight without presenting a boarding pass as airline agents who were helping other ticketed passengers board failed to stop her or ask her to present a boarding pass.

Once on the flight but before it landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Delta employees realized she was not authorized to be on the plane and asked for her boarding pass, which she could not provide, the complaint said.

When the plane landed in Paris early on Nov. 27, French law enforcement met her at the gate and detained her before she entered customs, it said.

During her interview with U.S. law enforcement, Dali was shown images from airport security showing her bypassing TSA officials and Delta employees.

The complaint said she confirmed the images were of her and “also stated that she knew her conduct was illegal.”

In a statement, Delta Air Lines thanked French and U.S. authorities for their assistance and said a review had concluded that its security infrastructure was “sound and that deviation from standard procedures is the root cause of this event.”

It added: “We are thoroughly addressing this matter and will continue to work closely with our regulators, law enforcement and other relevant stakeholders. Nothing is of greater importance than safety and security.”