Alleged stowaway who boarded flight to Paris released from federal custody with strict pretrial conditions

The woman who was federally charged with boarding a New York-to-Paris flight as a stowaway during the Thanksgiving holiday was released from U.S. custody Friday with strict pretrial conditions.

Svetlana Dali, 57, appeared Friday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph A. Marutollo in Brooklyn federal court in New York, where he ruled that she must submit to GPS monitoring and a curfew and banned her from all airports pending trial.

Marutollo ordered Dali to turn over travel documents and undergo a mental health evaluation and treatment. Dali, who is a U.S. permanent resident, is also restricted to the city of Philadelphia, where she will live with an acquaintance from church, and the Eastern District of New York, where she faces one count of being a stowaway on a vessel or aircraft without consent.

If she is convicted, she could face up to five years in prison, a fine or both. She has yet to enter a plea.

Marutollo said he was “deeply concerned” about releasing Dali, citing her risk of flight, lack of connection to the community and inability to secure a third-party custodian who would be legally responsible for her compliance with the release conditions.

Dali, who sat between her attorney and a Russian translator, appeared to scowl at Marutollo from time to time as he raised his concerns.

Dali’s attorney, Brooklyn federal defender Michael Schneider, told the court that her family and her fiancé are in Europe and that she had no way of securing a third-party custodian.

Schneider said Dali didn’t have a criminal record and wasn’t a danger to the community, adding that she wasn’t a “serious” risk of flight and that her offense was similar to jumping a subway turnstile.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brooke Theodora echoed Marutollo’s unease, saying the government believed Dali was a flight risk, pointing to several incidents in which Dali previously tried to sneak on flights at domestic and international airports.

Theodora said Dali tried to travel for free as recently as February at Miami International Airport, where she tried to get through a secure area to reach departures.

Dali’s actions raised “very significant national security concerns and very significant public security risks,” said Theodora, who insisted the bail conditions needed to ensure that Dali would attend future court hearings.

According to the FBI’s criminal complaint, Dali boarded a Delta flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Charles de Gaulle Airport on Nov. 26. The complaint said agents were busy helping other passengers board and “did not stop her or ask her to present a boarding pass.”

Dali bypassed two security and ticketing checkpoints before she boarded the plane without a ticket, a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration said.

French authorities detained Dali when she landed in Paris, the complaint said. Dali returned to the U.S. last week and was taken into custody in New York, a senior law enforcement source said. 

According to the FBI complaint, agents interviewed Dali at JFK, where she admitted that she took the flight without a boarding pass and that she knew her conduct was illegal.