Us charges Belarusian officials over Ryanair diversion

NEW YORK AP - U.S. prosecutors charged four Belarusian government officials with aircraft piracy for allegedly diverting a Ryanair flight last year to arrest an opposition journalist, using a ruse that there was a bomb threat.

A regular passenger plane traveling between Athens, Greece and Vilnius, Lithuania was diverted on May 23 by air traffic control authorities to the Belarusian capital Minsk, according to the charges, announced by federal prosecutors in New York.

Since the dawn of powered flight, countries around the world have cooperated to keep passenger airplanes safe. The defendants shattered the standards by diverting an airplane to the improper purpose of repressing dissent and free speech, according to a news release by U.S. attorney Damian Williams.

Ryanair RYAAY, RYA, 0 RYA, 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 attempt to encourage the crew to comply with the flight controllers' orders.

Raman Pratasevich, a journalist and activist who was arrested, ran a popular messaging app that helped organize mass demonstrations against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenka.

In the year 2019, the 26-year-old Pratasevich left Belarus and faced charges of inciting riots there.

In August, U.S. President Joe Biden levied new sanctions against Belarus on the one-year anniversary of Lukashenka's election to a sixth term as the leader of the Eastern European nation — a vote the U.S. and international community said was fraught with irregularities.

From the archives May 2021, Biden calls Belarus s forced diversion of Ryanair flight an outrageous incident. Also May 2021 NATO restricts Belarusian officials headquarters access over Ryanair incident.

A widespread belief that the vote for 2020 was stolen triggered mass protests in Belarus that led to increased repressions by Lukashenka s government on protesters, dissidents and independent media. More than 35,000 people were arrested and thousands were beaten and jailed. The protests lasted for months, petering out only when winter set in.

See August 2020 Here s why the protests in Belarus and the re-election of Europe's last dictatorship took place.

Those charged in court papers on Thursday were identified as Leonid Mikalaevich Churo, the director general of Belaeronavigatsia Republican Unitary Air Navigation Services Enterprise, the Belarusian state air navigation authority, Oleg Kazyuchits, the deputy director general of Belaeronavigatsia, and two Belarusian state security agents whose full identities were not known to prosecutors.

The defendants were cited by U.S. prosecutors as fugitives and were accused of conspiring to commit aircraft piracy, which has a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison. Messages seeking comment were sent to the Belarusian Embassy in Washington and the country's U.N. mission in New York on Thursday evening. Their phones rang unanswered.

The U.S. officials say they have jurisdiction in the case because American citizens were aboard the flight.

After the episode last year, the European Union banned Belarusian airlines from using airspace and airports in the 27 nation bloc, urging EU-based carriers not to fly over Belarus and imposing sanctions on some Belarusian officials. The plane incident, according to the EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, was a hijacking. Lithuania told all incoming and outgoing flights to avoid Belarus, while Ukraine s leader moved to ban Ukrainian flights via the neighbor's airspace.

Key Belarus ally Russia offered support, arguing that Belarus had acted in line with international procedures for bomb threats and saying that the West reacted rashly.

Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed Lukashenka for talks days after the incident and nodded in sympathy, as Lukashenka spoke about the EU sanctions, saying the bloc was trying to destabilize his country.