Credentials aside, Mr McKenzie, Alpha Leader makes an important point, which I as a fully paid-up member of the ATC fraternity totally agree with.
I don't know where you work, but I'll take a wild guess and say ScOACC. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Now, how would you feel if management told you that as well as controlling a bandboxed area sector at night (say, Humber/Montrose), you also have to provide approach services to aircraft landing at, say, Aberdeen airport? You are operating from two different consoles, with two different frequencies. The only aid to your job is one of those fancy office chairs with the reclining backrest and friction-free wheels. To make matters worse, those pesky engineers are fiddling with the phones, so none of them work properly.
No matter how quiet these sectors are, I don't think any of us working at a UK ATC unit would tolerate those conditions. And nor should we.
In my opinion, Skyguide have a majority shareholding in the blame for not just one, but two crimes. Firstly, the system at Zurich that night was so seriously degraded that the duty ATCO was unable to provide safe air traffic services to the aircraft under his control. The link in Mercenary Pilot's post illustrates this quite well. Secondly, someone in that company has released the ATCO's name to the media, which has ultimately resulted in his murder. Now I don't care whether the name was officially released, or unofficially "leaked" - the fact is that the man's name should never have been in the public domain.
This is an open forum and I don't think Alpha Leader should be disqualified from making valid comments just because his profile doesn't say "ATCO". Those who criticise should either bring something meaningful to the discussion, or wind their necks in.
LTP