Police deny laser incident blinding pilot
MOSCOW. July 28. KAZINFORM Police of the Moscow region have denied reports about another pilot blinded by a laser beam when a plane was landing at Domodedovo airport last night, the press service of the head Interior Department for the Moscow region told Itar-Tass on Thursday. "No complaints have been lodged with police about blinding a pilot or any other similar incidents. A number of mass media reports do not conform to the reality," the press service said; Kazinform refers to Itar-Tass.
Earlier, mass media reports said that another pilot was blinded by a laser beam when the plane was making a landing approach to Domodedovo. The laser beam was presumably sent from the Lyubertsi district in the Moscow region.
On Tuesday night Moscow police detained a man in the west of Moscow who sent a laser beam to blind a pilot of a plane which was landing at Domodedovo airport. The suspect was detained by police agents of the Moscow Western Administrative District. An illumination music player, which blinded the pilot, was found in the boot of the suspect's car, an Interior source said. The suspect denied wrongdoing, but police opened the trunk of his car to see bright laser beams going high up into the sky. Police confiscated the illumination music player which will be subjected to special examination.
Two more incidents of blinding pilots who were making a landing approach to Domodedovo were registered overnight to July 26. Dozens of "laser attacks" on taking off and landing planes, which blind aircraft crews and pose a threat to planes, have been registered in Russia since the middle of last year. The last incident when a laser hooligan was detained took place on July 22. The hooligan, a resident of Moscow, used a laser pointer to blind pilots taking off from Vnukovo airport.
Early in July the State Duma drafted a bill which envisages criminal punishment to laser hooligans. The proposed draft envisages either imprisonment for a term of up to three years or a fine worth 80,000 roubles (2,000 euros) for hooligan laser tricks; in the event of an attempt to blind a pilot a prison term rises to seven years; if grave consequences are entailed a harder punishment is administered - ten years in prison.
"Despite numerous incidents of blinding pilots by laser beams neither the government nor related departments raised a problem of imposing restrictions on sale of laser appliances," Vice- Premier Sergei Ivanov said on Tuesday.