Western officials have condemned the act as an act of state terror and aerial piracy. The European Union has called on all EU-based airlines to suspend flights over Belarus and is taking steps to ban EU airlines in Belarus. The UK is preventing the Belarusian national airline from flying to Britain.
Ryanair Flight 4978 in Belarusian airspace when President Alexander Lukashenko personally ordered a MiG-29 fighter jet to divert the flight and escort it to Minsk airport, the aircraft landed and security guards searched it and passengers’ luggage.
Government officials arrested Roman Protasevich, 26, a journalist who co-founded a media outlet criticizing the president, who could face up to 15 years in prison. A female couple also arrested.
Protasevich faces charges of inciting public and social hatred, the New York Times reported. A conviction for terrorism can result in the death penalty.
The flight, which carried 126 passengers and a team of six, was in the direction of Athens, Greece, to Vilnius, Lithuania. Ryanair said air traffic in Belarus had radioed the flight team that there was a bomb on board and told them to land in Minsk.
The BBC reported that Protasevich was frightened before his arrest and told passengers he would face the death penalty. Protasevich’s lawyers said he was in a criminal career through the country’s intelligence services.
Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said Monday that the act was “a state-funded Array kidnapping. . . a state-sponsored hacking,” and that agents of the Belarusian KGB airline, its security agency, were aboard the aircraft. passengers remained in Minsk when the plane took off.
U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blink called it a “shocking act” and demanded the prompt release of Protasevich.
European Union leaders will meet in Brussels to give an answer. The airlines, adding Ryanair, one of Europe’s largest airlines, have planned to end their flights over Belarus.
Tadeusz Giczan, editor-in-chief of NEXTA, the opposition co-founded through Protasevich, tweeted that KGB agents were on the plane.
(GMT hours are approximate)
7:29 a. m. : Flight FR4978 departs from Athens, Greece, to Vilnius, Lithuania.
9:30 a. m. : Enter Belarusian airspace.
9:46 am: The plane is about seventy-five miles from Vilnius when Belarusian air traffic tells the flight team that there is a bomb on board, the lers order it to land at Minsk airport. jet escorts him down.
9:48 a. m. : The aircraft issues a transponder code for “general emergency” and begins its descent into Minsk.
10:16 a. m. : The aircraft lands and passengers must disembark from the aircraft. Security officials started searching for bombs but no explosives were found. Journalist Roman Protasevich and his companion, known as Russian Sofia Sapega, were arrested.
5:47 p. m. : Minsk takeoff.
6:26 p. m. : Land in Vilnius.
Lukashenko, 66, is the european leader with the most years of service in Belarus since 1994. He is described as a Soviet-era authoritarian, who controlled all the country’s media and imprisoned the parties to the conflict and dissidents. He was re-elected in August in a controversial election that sparked mass protests across the country.
The United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and Canada froze the assets of nearly 90 Belarusian officials after the election. In 2005, President George W. Bush’s leadership called Belarus “the last genuine dictatorship in central Europe. “.
Protasevich, a journalist, dissident and critic of Lukashenko and the government, helped create and publish a so-called Nexta on Telegram, a social media platform used through members of the government opposition.
Protasevich left Belarus in 2019 and lives in exile in Lithuania. He was returning from a meeting with Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Greece when her flight was devastated.
Last year’s widespread protests in Belarus were connected to NEXTA, whose videos and images of the protests served as the movement’s virtual headquarters. Police met violent protesters, which led to an almost universal condemnation.
SOURCE USA TODAY Network Reports and Research; The Associated Press; Flightradar24; maps4news. com/ © HERE
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