New York: A Russian woman with permanent US residency who returned to the United States after authorities said she stowed away on a flight from New York to Paris made her first appearance in court Thursday, claiming she was abused.
Svetlana DaliDressed in jeans, she appeared agitated as she spoke to her lawyer through a Russian interpreter 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 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 when she was placed in an “extremely cold” room where she became ill and eventually lost consciousness.
“She believes that if she stays at MDC, her life will be in danger,” Schneider said.
When he Magistrate Judge Robert M. When Levine said she was requesting the use of a spectrometer to test her blood and determine if she had been poisoned, the judge replied that he was “not sure” the device was in the prison commissary.
She will be held in federal lockup for another night after lawyers agreed to postpone a bail hearing until Friday so that enough information can be gathered to craft a bail package.
Assistant US Attorney Brooke Theodora said the government’s main concern was that Daly was a flight risk.
She did not object when Schneider said the single federal stowaway charge she faced was a “minor charge” compared to her arrest for jumping a turnstile to enter the city’s subway system.
A criminal complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court said Daly was interviewed by an FBI agent when he returned to Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday and flew to Paris as a stowaway on a Delta Airlines flight on Nov. 26.
Airport surveillance footage shows she was initially reprimanded by a Transportation Security Administration official because she lacked a boarding pass when she first tried to enter Terminal 4 at Kennedy, the complaint said.
Five minutes later, she successfully accessed security screening machines without a boarding pass by entering a special lane for airline employees at the same time that a large crew of an Air Europa flight was passing by, the complaint said.
It said she boarded a Delta flight without presenting a boarding pass because 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 board 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 could enter customs, it said.
During her interview with US law enforcement, Daly was shown images of airport security in which she bypassed TSA officers and Delta employees.
The complaint said she confirmed the images were hers and “also stated she knew her conduct was illegal.”
In a statement, Delta Air Lines thanked French and US authorities for their assistance and said the review concluded that its security infrastructure “was sound and deviations from standard procedures were the root cause of the incident.”
It added: “We are fully addressing this matter and will continue to work closely with our regulators, law enforcement and other relevant stakeholders. Nothing is more important than safety and security.”
