Poland on Friday charged three Belarusian officials in connection with the forced landing of a Ryanair plane in Minsk in 2021 with a Belarusian opposition blogger on board.
Detectives accuse the trio of taking control of an aircraft, making an emergency landing and depriving them of liberty, the Warsaw Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
Next, the authorities plan to apply for international arrest warrants for the three Belarusians, who are not in Poland.
Protasevich co-founded the regime-critical Telegram channel Nexta, which supports the opposition to longtime Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko.
In May 2021, Belarusian authorities, with the help of a fighter jet, forced a Ryanair passenger plane flying from Athens to Vilnius to make an unscheduled landing in Minsk due to a bomb threat.
Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega were on board and were both arrested after landing and sentenced to prison terms.
Protasevich was unexpectedly released in 2023, while Sapega was pardoned.
The Polish Public Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation because the plane was registered in Poland.
“During the investigation, recordings of conversations from the cockpit of the aircraft, including the conversation recorder, and technical flight data from the so-called ‘Black Box’ were secured,” the authority said.
In addition, reports from crew members on the progress of the flight were obtained.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the suspects are the former director of Belarusian air traffic control, the head of the flight control center in Minsk and the head of the Belarusian intelligence service (KGB).
The investigation revealed that the suspects provided false information about an alleged explosive device on board when they took control of the plane and forced the pilots to make an emergency landing, depriving 132 passengers of their liberty, while the main objective was to arrest Protasevich.
