Families welcome guilty verdict over Mali crash that killed 116

Relatives of victims of the 2014 Air Algérie crash have welcomed a Paris court ruling finding Spanish airline Swiftair guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

Sandrine Tricot, who lost her husband Frederic Tricot in the crash, told the BBC it was a relief to finally have a verdict after "4,449 days of waiting for the victims' families".

The French court on Monday fined the airline €225,000 ($256,000; £193,000), the maximum penalty, over the crash that killed all 116 people on board flight AH5017 from the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou, to Algeria's main airport in Algiers.

Swiftair's defence rejected the French investigation, describing the case as "a botched job".

Spanish prosecutors had previously closed their own investigation without bringing any charges.

The court said "negligence" in Swiftair's training had "certainly contributed to the accident".

The McDonnell Douglas MD-83, owned by Swiftair and leased to Air Algérie with its crew, crashed in northern Mali on 24 July 2014.

Those killed included 54 French citizens, 23 Burkinabè nationals, as well as Lebanese and Algerian passengers and six Spanish crew members.

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