Rio De Janeiro, Brazil ? A federal judge indicted two U.S. pilots and four Brazilian air traffic controllers on manslaughter-related charges Friday in Brazil’s worst air disaster, court officials said.

Judge Murilo Mendes accepted the charges filed by a prosecutor last week in a federal court in Sinop, a small city near the Amazon jungle site where a Boeing jetliner last year plunged into the rain forest after a collision with an executive jet. All 154 people aboard the jetliner died, while the executive jet landed safely.

“Now the criminal process begins,” court spokesman Fabio Paz said by telephone.

The American pilots have been called on to give depositions on Aug. 27 and the flight controllers have been called to testify a day later, Paz said.

Pilots Joseph Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore, N.Y., and Jan Paladino, 34, of Westhampton Beach, N.Y., were charged with exposing an aircraft to danger resulting in death. Paz said the charge is similar to involuntary manslaughter and is punishable by one to three years in prison.

An attorney for the pilots said the charges were unfounded.

“The pilots’ conduct was completely competent throughout the flight and cannot be fairly characterized as criminal,” Joel R. Weiss said. “The allegations against the pilots are inaccurate, and the pilots are innocent.”

The men were detained for two months after the crash. They were allowed to return to the Long Island, N.Y., communities late last year after agreeing to return to Brazil when required by local authorities.

Neither pilot could be immediately reached Friday. A call to a phone number listed under Lepore’s name went unanswered and Paladino’s number was unlisted.

Weiss indicated that they might not return to Brazil, saying an extradition treaty between the two countries “does not permit the extradition of a U.S. citizen or a Brazilian for this charge.”

Lepore and Paladino were flying an Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet when it collided Sept. 29 with a Boeing 737 operated by Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes SA, sending the passenger jet crashing into a remote swathe of the jungle.

They had been taking the Brazilian made Legacy, owned by Ronkonkoma, N.Y.-based ExcelAire Service Inc., on its maiden voyage to the U.S.

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