European leaders condemn Belarusian authorities after plane is forced to land and opposition journalist is detained
By
Isabelle Khurshudyan
and
Michael Birnbaum
May 23, 2021 at 1:38 p.m. EDT
MOSCOW — Authorities in Belarus ordered a Ryanair flight that took off in Athens and was headed to Lithuania to land in Minsk over a purported bomb threat, which the Belarusian opposition is calling just a pretext to arrest an activist on board.
The forcing down of the airplane, traveling between two European capitals before a MiG-29 fighter escorted it to Minsk, drew condemnation from European leaders. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said he wanted to discuss immediate sanctions at a previously scheduled meeting of European leaders in Brussels on Monday.
“Hijacking of a civilian plane is an unprecedented act of state terrorism. It cannot go unpunished,” he wrote on Twitter.
The news service for the airport in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, said the plane was diverted because of reports that there were explosives on board. President Alexander Lukashenko personally ordered the fighter escort, the BelTA state news agency said.
The airport news service told state media that a bomb was not found on the plane, which had 123 passengers.
Roman Protasevich, an opposition journalist who ran the popular social media Telegram channel Nexta, was detained upon the plane’s landing. The flight was headed to Vilnius, Lithuania, where the 26-year-old has been living in exile.
Protasevich faces more than 12 years in prison after he and the creator of Nexta, which exposed Belarusian police brutality during anti-government demonstrations last year, were added to a list of individuals purportedly involved in terrorist activities. Nexta and its sister channel, Nexta Live, have close to 2 million subscribers.
Protasevich said on his Telegram channel earlier Sunday before departing Greece that he sensed he was under surveillance.
“The regime forced the landing [of the] Ryanair plane in Minsk to arrest journalist and activist Roman Protasevich,” opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said on Twitter, adding that she is demanding his “immediate release” and calling on the International Civil Aviation Organization to take action.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said on Twitter that the plane was “forcibly landed” and that the Belarusian “regime is behind the abhorrent action.”
The Ryanair flight was nearly at the Lithuanian border before it made a U-turn to divert to Minsk, according to the Flightradar24 website.
Ryanair said in a statement that Belarusian air traffic control notified its crew that there was “a potential security risk on board” and instructed it to divert “to the nearest airport, Minsk.” But the plane was much closer to the Vilnius airport than to the one in Minsk, according to the flight tracker.
Nothing untoward was found, the statement said. The flight departed for Vilnius at 7 p.m. local time in Minsk.
“This is unprecedented,” said a senior European diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the unfolding situation.
The diplomat said European policymakers would need to discuss whether to issue a fresh wave of sanctions against Belarus and, more practically, whether it was still safe to fly over Belarusian airspace.
Flights in Northern and Eastern Europe often try to avoid Russian airspace — including the exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea — which means that if Belarusian airspace is also a no-go, north-south flights in Europe could become quite circuitous.
Protasevich had been in Athens taking photographs during a visit by Tikhanovskaya to Greece, so his whereabouts would have been public to anyone with an interest. The senior diplomat noted that investigative open-source outlets such as Bellingcat have been able to purchase flight manifests and that it would probably not have been difficult for Belarusian authorities to gain access to information about Protasevich’s travel plans.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Twitter that Britain is “coordinating with our allies. This outlandish action by Lukashenko will have serious implications.”
Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, has unleashed a sustained crackdown on all forms of opposition, including media. On Tuesday, the offices of Belarusian independent news site Tut.by were raided after a criminal case of “large-scale tax evasion” was opened against it.
Lukashenko claimed a sweeping victory in last year’s elections — a result internationally denounced as rigged. Months of popular protests over his rule followed, prompting a crackdown that has left most of the opposition exiled or jailed.
Birnbaum reported from Riga, Latvia.
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