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The Minsk-based human rights centre Viasna has confirmed that Protasevich has been arrested and taken into custody.
The EU will meet to discuss sanctions on Belarus in a scheduled meeting, but clearly the agenda will now be dominated by the response to the Ryanair forced landing.
Several harsh sanctions have been already floated including: an suspend overflights of all EU airlines over Belarus, ban Belavia from landing in EU airports, and suspend all transit, including ground transit, between Belarus to the EU.
Confusion as plane forced to land
Protasevich is one of the most wanted
of Belarus’ opposition activists, as the Nexta Channel has been instrumental in rallying and co-ordinating the otherwise leaderless mass protests that have rocked the country for almost a year.
He was put on a terrorist watch list in November by the KGB, which, unlike its Russian equivalent, didn't bother to change its name after the collapse of the USSR in 1991.
Under Protasevich, the Nexta-Live Telegram channel documented
police brutality at the mass protests against Lukashenko after his disputed re-election last year on August 9. Protasevich fled to neighbouring Poland, where he was enrolled as a student. More recently, Lithuania had granted Protasevich political asylum, where the government has been an outspoken critic of the Lukashenko regime.
It appears that Belarusian KGB agents boarded the plane, claimed there was a bomb on board and that there was a “conflict” between an unidentified passenger, presumed to be a KGB operative, and the plane’s crew.
Lina Beisiene, a spokeswoman for Lietuvos oro uostai, the operator of Lithuanian airports, said that Lithuanian civil aviation authorities had no information about any bombs on the plane.
"We don’t have such information," she told the national LRT television channel. "There was a conflict between a passen- ger and a crewmember. It was decided to land the plane in Minsk," she said as cited by Tass, giving no further details.
Ryanair released a statement that said: “The crew on a Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius today were notified
by Belarus ATC of a potential security threat on board and were instructed to divert to the nearest airport, Minsk. The aircraft landed safely and passengers were offloaded while security checks were completed by local authorities. Nothing untoward was found and authorities cleared the aircraft to depart together with passengers and crew after approx. 5hrs on the ground in Minsk.”
A MiG jet fighter was scrambled to intercept the plane and rendez-voused with the commercial plane shortly before it was due to leave Belarusian airspace, forcing it to return to Minsk and land there.
At the time the pilot was told of the possible bomb by the Belarusian authorities the plane was near
turned the plane towards Minsk, it was decided to scramble a MiG-29 crew
on duty from the Baranovichi airport (Brest region)," the ministry said on its Telegram channel, citing Andrei Gurtse- vich, chief of the air operations and first deputy commander of Belarus air and air defence forces.
According to Gurtsevich, the country’s air defence forces were put on high alert following reports that a civil plane with a possible bomb on board was in the country’s airspace. He said that the MiG- 29 crew was tasked with controlling the situation and helping the civil aircraft make a safe landing at Minsk airport. After the Ryanair plane landed, the fighter jet returned to its home base.
After the plane landed at 1pm local time law enforcement agents entered and searched it but no explosive device was found, the authorities confirmed. Ryanair said in a statement that the plane left again at 5pm local time to continue its journey.
However, according to reports, four Russians and two other Belarusian nationals, including one travelling with
“A MiG jet fighter was scrambled to intercept the plane and rendez-voused with the commercial plane shortly before it was due to leave Belarusian airspace”
the border with Lithuania and its destination airport of Vilnius was the nearest landing point for the plane, but instead it was redirected and headed to Minsk.
Lukashenko personally ordered the MiG to scramble and intercept the passenger plane, the state-owned BelTA news agency reports, citing the Pul Pervogo Telegram channel close to the presidential administration.
"After the pilot of this civil aircraft [the Ryanair plane] decided to land at an alternative airport (Minsk-2) and
Protasevich, remained in Minsk and did not re-join the plane, although there are no details of who these people were or why they did not continue their journey.
Crowds of people and several senior Lithuanian politicians gathered at the airport in Vilnius to greet the plane when it at last arrived at its final destination in the early evening of the same day.
Dogged by the KGB
The incident also strongly suggests that the Belarus KGB is active in the EU and has been staking out opposition figures living in self-imposed exile.
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