The United States has brought charges against Belarusian officials over the landing of a Ryanair plane in Minsk
Photo: Reuters
The US Department of Justice has filed charges against officials from Belarus over the incident with the landing of a Ryanair plane in Minsk, TASS reports.
Representatives of the American authorities accuse Belarusian officials of conspiring to illegally change the route of the plane. Charges of air piracy were brought against the head of Belaeronavigation, his deputy and two employees of the State Security of Belarus.
The ministry’s statement says that the message about the bomb on board the plane, which as a result made an emergency landing in Minsk, was deliberately false. According to the Ministry of Justice, the officials “conspired to use a false threat of a bomb on board to illegally change the route of a passenger flight with American citizens in order to arrest a Belarusian dissident.”
A Ryanair plane en route from Athens to Vilnius was forced to land in Minsk at the request of a dispatcher in May 2021. It was necessary to land the aircraft because of the message about the mining of the flight. As soon as the plane landed, Belarusian special services arrested blogger Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend, Russian citizen Sofia Sapega, who was on board. No explosive device was found on the plane. Belarusian dispatcher Oleg Galegov, who allegedly participated in the incident, escaped from Belarus to Poland and called the episode a special operation of the security forces.
