Belarus military forces Ryanair jet landing as reporter arrested

Bloomberg

Belarus scrambled a fighter jet to force a Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania to land in its territory, where authorities detained a journalist who covered the 2020 presidential election and protests against Alexander Lukashenko’s disputed claim of victory.
The crew of the Boeing 737-800 carrying scores of passengers from Athens to Vilnius was notified by Belarusian authorities of a “potential security threat on board” and diverted to Minsk on Sunday, a Ryanair spokeswoman said.
After a Mig-29 fighter tailed the commercial flight to the Belarusian capital, authorities boarded the plane and arrested Raman Pratasevich, the former editor-in-chief of the most popular Telegram news channels
in Belarus, Franak Viacorka, an adviser to Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, said on Twitter. “At first he panicked, then calmed down a bit, but still was trembling. He said he’ll face the death penalty here. He was taken aside, his belongings dumped on the runway,” Viacorka said, citing passengers.
The flight was later cleared to depart but had not done so by 7:15 pm local time. Belarusian Interior Ministry spokeswoman Olga Chemodanova declined to comment.
The crackdown by Lukashenko’s administration against the opposition since the election has led to US and EU sanctions and pushed Lukashenko closer to Russia. The plane’s grounding now risks deepening the international isolation of a country sometimes referred to as the last dictatorship in Europe. Lukashenko is slated to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin this week in Sochi, Rossiya-1 television reported on Sunday.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda called the event “unprecedented” and urged Nato and the European Union to react to the threat posed by the Belarusian regime to civil aviation. The forced landing came before a two-day meeting in Brussels of EU leaders, who an official said would discuss the events. It also drew condemnation from countries including Greece, Lithuania, Austria and France.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called it “unacceptable” and demanded “a firm and united response from Europeans.” Mateusz Morawiecki, the prime minister of Belarus’s neighbor Poland, urged sanctions against Lukashenko for committing an “act of terrorism.” Greece called it a “state hijacking.”
There were conflicting reports of the number of people on board. The foreign ministries of Greece and Lithuania said there were 171 passengers from at least 18 countries. The Belarusian state news agency Belta reported, however, that there were 123 passengers.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, whose country has become a popular destination for dissidents from neighboring Belarus since the election, summoned Belarus’s top envoy to Vilnius to demand the immediate release of all passengers and crew.
Lukashenko, in power since 1994, faced unprecedented popular resistance after claiming victory for his sixth term. While protests have largely fizzled out after more than 30,000 people were arrested and thousands more fled the country, authorities continue to crack down on dissent.
The 26-year-old Pratasevich, who has lived in Lithuania since November, was placed on a terrorist watch list in November by the Belarusian State Security Committee, known as the KGB.