The President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko ordered a Ryanair flight aboard a major opposition blogger heading to Lithuania to land in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, and arrested him on arrival, officials and human rights activists said.
Members of the law enforcement forces arrested Roman Proposemic activist, whose name was in a list of warrants after mass demonstrations last year after elections that Lukashenko claimed to have won with a great difference.
The plane, which was flying over Belarus on a flight from Athens to Vilnius, had almost arrived in Lithuania when it changed direction and was escorted by a fighter jet to Minsk amid reports of explosives on the aircraft, according to the Flight Tracking website and .
No explosives were found, BelTA reported.
Belarus’s organized crime watchdog also said Protasevic had been arrested but later deleted the statement from his Telegram channel.
Mr Lukashenko has personally ordered the fighter jet to escort the Ryanair Boeing to Minsk, state news agency BelTA reported.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also issued a statement on the matter
Mr Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, has launched a violent crackdown on protesters in 2020. Some 35,000 people have been arrested since last August, according to human rights groups. Dozens have been sentenced to prison terms. Authorities say more than 1,000 criminal cases have been opened.
A spokesman for the Lithuanian airport authority told Reuters that the plane, which was scheduled to land in Vilnius at 14:00 Greek time, was diverted to Minsk due to a dispute between the crew and a passenger.
The plane is expected to arrive from Minsk to Vilnius at 18:00 Greek time, the spokeswoman said.
Protasevic is one of the founders of the opposition news service NEXTA, a Telegram channel that has become one of the main sources of news coverage of the protests in Belarus. He is hostile to Lukashenko and helps coordinate protests.
Opposition politician Svetlana Tikhanuskaya, Lukashenko’s main rival in the last election, said Belarussian authorities had “endangered the safety of passengers on board the aircraft and the entire civil aviation in order to punish the man responsible.” Belarus’ largest independent Telegram channel. “
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