The accused stowaway on a flight from New York to Paris in November has been arrested again, this time caught at the U.S.-Canada border after ditching her ankle bracelet monitor, according to a senior official briefed on the matter.
Svetlana Dali was arrested Monday in the Buffalo, New York, area near the Canadian border, the source told NBC New York. A day before, while staying with her boyfriend in Philadelphia, she had allegedly cut off the ankle bracelet monitor she was required to wear as she awaited trial.
The boyfriend found the severed ankle monitor and notified law enforcement, according to sources.
Dali allegedly took a Greyhound bus to Buffalo before ultimately getting stopped by Canadian authorities as she tried to cross the border. She was taken into custody by law enforcement, and was later said to be in FBI custody.
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The 57-year-old Dali is scheduled to appear in court Tuesday afternoon before being turned over to the Eastern District of New York, where she was initially charged after sneaking onto the flight.
Spokespersons for the U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI declined to comment. At a previous bail hearing earlier in December, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brooke Theodora said the government had concerns Dali might flee while awaiting trial.
Dali's court-appointed lawyer, Michael Schneider, did not return a request for comment.
On Tuesday, Nov. 26, Dali was able to get past security at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens and board a Delta Air Lines flight to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France, without a boarding pass, officials said.
A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) spokesperson said she bypassed two “identity verification and boarding status stations” before boarding the Paris-bound flight.
Dali was taken into custody and denied entry to France after landing at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Officials told CNN that two attempts to send Dali back to the U.S. were unsuccessful after she was disruptive.
Video captured one of the incidents on Nov. 30. The clip, obtained by NBC News, shows Dali screaming “Please help here!” and the “United States broke my heart,” while on Flight 265 from Paris to New York.
After about 20 minutes, Dali started to calm down, according to a witness. Four armed French police officers and an interpreter were brought onboard to assist.
Dali remained in French custody for several days before she was brought back to New York on Wednesday, Dec. 4, according to officials. She was then arrested by the FBI and charged with being a stowaway on an aircraft, which comes with a possible five-year prison sentence.
Dali faced a judge in New York on Thursday, Dec. 5, and then returned to court on Friday, Dec. 6. She was then released on recognizance under conditions that include GPS monitoring, a curfew and mental health treatment, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York.
The spokesperson said at that time Dali would be living with a friend from church in Philadelphia which the court verified by calling him on the record. She was also prohibited from leaving Philadelphia except to attend court or meet with her lawyer or for pre-trial services in New York.
Prosecutors at the Dec. 6 hearing said Dali had tried to sneak into secure areas of other U.S. airports before in a bid to travel without a ticket. Theodora said those attempts included one last February at Miami International Airport, where Dali was turned away as she tried to sneak into a secure area by going through a customs processing area to reach departing flights.
The prosecutor made the remarks as she urged that bail conditions be strict enough to ensure Dali, an unemployed Russian woman with permanent U.S. residency, would attend her court hearings.
Schneider said his client, who has no criminal history after being a permanent resident of the U.S. for more than a decade, was involved in “what could have been an aberrant act in a certain mental health state that's not going to happen in the future.”
At a hearing Thursday, Schneider said the charge against her was minor and that her offense was comparable to jumping a turnstile to enter the city's subway system.
Prosecutors objected to that comparison, saying the offense was serious and raised “very significant national security concerns and very significant public security risks for obvious reasons.”
The federal stowaway charge is rare. Only 41 people were charged with the crime in a 10-year span, according to the most recent statistics from the Bureau of Justice. More than 330,000 people were charged with federal crimes in that same timeframe.
Schneider said during the court hearing that the stowaway charge was unlikely to result in a prison sentence “unless she does something stupid.”
Larry Neumeister of The Associated Press contributed to this report.
