Page 54 - bne_May 2021_20210601

54 I Eastern Europe bne June 2021
Founder and editor in chief of Nexta Roman Protasevich was arrested and now faces a possible death penalty after a MiG fighter was used to force a commercial flight from Athens to Vilnius to land in Minsk.
Belarus forces a Ryanair commercial plane to land in Minsk and arrests top opposition Nexta journalist
Ben Aris in Berlin
Belarus scrambled a MiG-29 fighter to force down a Ryanair passenger plane flying over its territory and arrested a passenger, the former editor and co-founder of the opposition Nexta Telegram channel, who now faces the death penalty.
The plane was a commercial flight flying from Athens and Lithuania with 172 passengers on board, including Roman Protasevich (Belarusian: Raman Pratasevich), the former editor of the opposition Telegram channel and news organisation Nexta, which has been instrumental in reporting on Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko repres- sion of the opposition movement and
www.bne.eu
played a big role in organising and con- trolling the mass protests last summer.
Protasevich reports that he was followed to the airport in Athens by Belarusian KGB agents, some of whom got on the plane with him. Once the plane entered Belarusian airspace the presumed agents engaged with the Ryanair staff, claiming there was a bomb on board.
At the same time Lukashenko scrambled a MiG-29 jet fighter carrying live air-to- air missiles that forced the Ryanair plane to divert and land at Minsk Airport, according to eye witness accounts that filmed and photographed the plane after it was deployed.
The passengers were led off the plane and Protasevich was arrested and taken away. The plane left again to continue its flight without Protasevich about four hours later.
Protasevich was in Athens where he
had been covering a visit by opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a former presidential candidate who has declared herself the country’s leader-in-exile due to widespread fraud during last year’s elections.
The incident caused immediate outrage and claims of kidnapping as well as accusations that Belarus has carried out an illegal act of state-sponsored terrorism.