(Alliance News) - European nations were demanding answers after Belarusian authorities dispatched a fighter jet to force a Ryanair flight with more than 100 passengers to divert to Minsk, where a dissident journalist who was on board was then arrested.
Ryanair Holdings PLC said its plane was flying from Greece to Lithuania on Sunday when it was notified of "a potential security threat on board" by air traffic controllers in Belarus and told to divert to Minsk for an emergency landing.
The airline said the plane landed safely in Belarusian capital and "nothing untoward was found" after an inspection.
But authorities at the airport used the opportunity to arrest Roman Protasevich, a Belarusian journalist and opposition activist, who was a passenger, according to state media and the rights group Viasna.
The opposition news outlet Nexta also confirmed the arrest of Protasevich, the organization's co-founder and former editor who has been living in exile.
Governments across Europe reacted with the outrage, accusing authoritarian Belarus of engaging in a "state hijacking" of a civilian airliner and promising consequences.
Belarusian state media reported that the plane's diversion came on the personal instructions of long-time President Alexander Lukashenko after he had purportedly been alerted to a possible bomb on board.
He also ordered a MiG-29 fighter jet be scrambled to accompany the Ryanair plane, according to the Belta state news agency.
Lukashenko, 66, has led Belarus - a former Soviet republic in Eastern Europe bordering EU states Poland, Lithuania and Latvia - for more than a quarter of a century, tolerating little dissent.
Mass protests against his rule erupted after a presidential election last year that was widely seen as unfair and rife with electoral fraud.
Belarus calls Nexta an extremist organization and Protasevich has been wanted by authorities. Nexta had urged on the protests against Lukashenko.
Lukashenko has long considered Protasevich to be an enemy. The country's KGBÂ secret service had reportedly put his name on a list of people accused of alleged terrorism.
Condemnation of Belarus came swiftly on Sunday, with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg calling for an international investigation and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen saying the "utterly unacceptable" incident "must bear consequences."
Lithuanian Presient Gitanas Nauseda tweeted that Belarus had committed an "abhorrent action" and demanded the release of Protasevich.
The Greek Foreign Ministry said it "strongly condemns the state hijacking," while Germany, Austria and Sweden also denounced Minsk.
Ryanair flight FR 4978 was en route from Athens to the Lithuanian capital Vilnius when it was ordered to land in Minsk.
Flight monitoring websites, like Flightradar24, showed the plane was nearly out of Belarusian airspace when the diversion order was given.
"The fact that a flight between two EU states was forced to make a stopover under the pretext of a bomb threat is a serious interference in civil air traffic in Europe," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a statement, calling for "clear consequences" to be taken against the government in Minsk.
"We are very concerned about reports that journalist Roman Protasevich was arrested this way," Maas said of the activist.
He urged the issue to be taken up at a previously scheduled meeting of EU leaders on Monday in Brussels.
source: dpa
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