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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 a bomb scare. State media said President Alexander Lukashenko personally ordered the plane to land with the fighter escort.
The airport news service told state media that a bomb was not found on the plane, which had 123 passengers.
Roman Protasevich, who ran the popular opposition social media Telegram channel Nexta from outside Belarus, was detained upon the plane’s landing. The flight was headed to Vilnius, Lithuania.
He faces up to 15 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 in November. Nexta and its sister channel, Nexta Live, have close to 2 million subscribers.
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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. The plane was closer to the Vilnius airport than it was to the one 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.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen demanded that all of the plane’s passengers be allowed to travel onward to Lithuania.
“It is utterly unacceptable to force @Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius to land in Minsk,” she wrote on Twitter. “ALL passengers must be able to continue their travel to Vilnius immediately and their safety ensured. Any violation of international air transport rules must bear consequences.”
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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