SAO PAULO, Brazil (A) — A prosecutor asked a judge to lodge formal charges against two US pilots and four air traffic controllers involved in Brazil’s worst air disaster, last year’s crash of a jetliner that killed all 154 people aboard.Prosecutor Thiago Lemos de Andrade on Friday sought indictments against pilots Joseph Lepore and Jan Paul Paladino for involuntary manslaughter and exposing an aircraft to danger, crimes punishable by one to three years in prison, according to Leonita Violato, a media representative for Andrade.

Lepore, 42, and Paladino, 34, were flying an Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet on September 29, 2006, when it collided with a much larger Boeing 737 operated by Gol airlines, sending the passenger jet crashing into the Amazon rain forest.

The Legacy, owned by Ronkonkoma, New York-based ExcelAire Service Inc. and on its maiden voyage to the United States, managed to land safely.

Andrade accused the pilots of accidentally turning off a transponder that transmitted the Legacy’s location and failing to follow their flight plan. He also faulted the Brazilian controllers for allowing the two planes to continue on a collision course.

Local media reported that the judge could issue indictments as early as next week. Under Brazilian law, judges — not grand juries — issue indictments.

The two pilots were detained for two months after the crash and allowed to leave the country only after promising to return for any court proceedings. Andrade said he would ask the pilots to testify in the small city of Sinop near the crash site, but a Brazilian lawyer representing Lepore and Paladino indicated they would not return for court proceedings.

“We have to wait for the judge’s ruling, but the pilots have the right to defend themselves in the United States,” said the lawyer, Theo Dias.

Asked whether the pilots would return to Brazil if convicted, he said: “That is a hypothesis I prefer not to entertain.”

Joel R. Weiss, a US lawyer representing the pilots, said they are innocent.

“The accident of September 29 was a terrible tragedy, and today the prosecutor’s charges against the pilots compounds that tragedy,” Weiss said in a telephone interview from New York. Lawyers for the pilots have also said the pilots could not have changed their flight path unless ordered to do so by controllers.

While Brazilian authorities and media have heaped blame on Lepore and Paladino for months, the prosecutor’s action was the first time that specific accusations against controllers were aired.

The president of Brazil’s union representing air traffic controllers, Jorge Botelho, declined comment because he had not seen documents detailing the accusations, the Agencia Estado news agency reported.

Brazilian authorities conceded in recent weeks that controllers share some blame, but continued to insist that the pilots should have noticed that the Legacy’s transponder was not transmitting a signal with its location for 55 minutes before the collision.

Weiss said investigations so far have failed to show the American pilots should have noticed the transponder was not transmitting, saying Brazilian controllers should have known that the planes were on a collision path.

“The prosecutor has prematurely reached a conclusion before the true experts, the civil aeronautics investigators, have fully investigated,” Weiss said.

The bid to bring charges against the controllers came as a surprise because Brazilian officials had said they could only be tried in military courts because they are military personnel. Andrade argued, in essence, that civilian prosecutors can exercise jurisdiction over military officials in cases where crimes are committed against civilians.

Andrade assigned a greater degree of blame to one of the four controllers, Joao Marcelo Fernandes dos Santos, seeking to charge him with willingly exposing an aircraft to danger, a crime similar to intentional manslaughter.

That controller knew the two planes were heading toward each other but failed to notify his replacement after finishing a shift, Globo TV reported.

Earlier this week, a congressional commission heard testimony that some of Brazil’s controllers are poorly trained in English — the universal language for air traffic communications — and that blind spots exist in the country’s radar coverage.