NEW YORK (AP) – United States (US)prosecutors charged four Belarusian government officials on Thursday with aircraft piracy for diverting a Ryanair flight last year to arrest an opposition journalist, using a ruse that there was a bomb threat.
The charges, announced by federal prosecutors in New York, recounted how a regularly-scheduled passenger plane travelling between Athens, Greece, and Vilnius, Lithuania, on May 23 was diverted to Minsk, Belarus by air traffic control authorities there.
“Since the dawn of powered flight, countries around the world have cooperated to keep passenger airplanes safe. The defendants shattered those standards by diverting an airplane to further the improper purpose of repressing dissent and free speech,” US Attorney Damian Williams said in a news release announcing the charges.
Ryanair said Belarusian flight controllers told the pilots there was a bomb threat against the jetliner and ordered it to land in Minsk. The Belarusian military scrambled a MiG-29 fighter jet in an apparent attempt to encourage the crew to comply with the flight controllers’ orders.
The journalist and activist who was arrested, Raman Pratasevich, ran a popular messaging app that helped organise mass demonstrations against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
The 26-year-old Pratasevich left Belarus in 2019 and faced charges there of inciting riots.
In August, US President Joe Biden levied new sanctions against Belarus on the one-year anniversary of Lukashenko’s election to a sixth term leading the Eastern European nation – a vote the US and international community said was fraught with irregularities.
Widespread belief that the 2020 vote was stolen triggered mass protests in Belarus that led to increased repressions by Lukashenko’s government on protesters, dissidents and independent media.
