MOSCOW, July 10 (RAPSI) - A criminal case on the April 2012 ATR-72 crash that killed 72 near Tyumen has been submitted to a Tyumen district court, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement Thursday.

One of the three defendants, the captain of the ill-fated ATR-72 short-haul airliner, died in the crash. Russian legislation makes it possible to hold post-mortem trials of persons found guilty of committing a crime. But the captain’s relatives want to exonerate him in court. An aircraft mechanic and the head of the UTAir-Technic flight maintenance company’s on-call team will also stand trial.

On April 2, 2012, the ATR-72 plane of the UTAir Aviation airline took off from Tyumen airport and crashed 1.5 km from the runway, killing 33 passengers and crew members. Ten people were injured but survived.

Earlier, officials of the Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK) said the crash had been caused by ice forming on the aircraft. Although the plane was not properly treated with de-icing agents, the ground control allowed its crew to take off.

The defendants are charged with violating aircraft traffic and maintenance safety regulations and also manslaughter causing the death of two and more persons.

The Tyumen crash is one of the deadliest aircraft disasters of the past few years. In November 2013, a Boeing B-737 of Tatarstan Airlines flying from Moscow to Kazan crashed at the Kazan airport and killed 44 passengers and six crew members.