Belarus, Ryanair flight hijacked to arrest dissident in exile

Minsk airport with the Boing 737 landed

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23 May 2021 Ryanair flight FR4978, coming from Athens to Vilnius in Lithuania, was intercepted, hijacked and escorted by a Belarusian MIG-29 fighter and landed in Minsk, officially for safety reasons because a bomb on board the aircraft.

Once on the ground, however, agents disembarked from the Boing 737 and stopped one of the passengers, the opponent of the Belarusian regime, Roman Protasevich.

The news was announced by the Belarusian protest channel Nexta TV, one of the most followed voices of dissidents in the Lukashenko regime, stressing that Roman Protasevich, 26, is one of the media's exiled collaborators. The Nexta TV channel played a leading role in the wave of protests after the declaration of victory in the presidential elections in August 2020 by the Belarusian president, Aljaksandr Lukashenko who has been in power since 1994. Presidential elections internationally recognized as incorrect. Protests against Lukashenko have mobilized thousands of people in Minsk and other parts of the country. Protests that have been severely and violently repressed with opposition politicians arrested or forced to leave Belarus.

Last November, the Belarusian authorities had added Protasevich to the list of "persons involved in terrorist activities".

, antagonist of Lukashenko, winner of the presidential elections of 2020, forced into exile, said that Roman Protasevich risks the death penalty and called for his immediate release.

The

, 

, demanded the immediate release of Protasevich because: "This hijacking is a threat to international civil aviation". The Lithuanian leader spoke of "unprecedented event! A civilian passenger plane flying to Vilnius was forcibly landed in Minsk," he tweeted. "The Belarusian political activist and founder of Nexta was on the plane. He was arrested. The regime behind this abominable action. I urge you to release Roman Protasevich!" Added Nausėda.

The

also intervened harshly on the matter,

demanding the immediate release of all passengers on the Ryanair plane forced to land in Minsk, Belarus. The episode was strongly condemned to unison by the Presidents of the EU Parliament,

, of the

, of the

Council

and of the EU representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy,

. "All passengers must be able to continue their journey immediately," Borrell tweeted, implicitly demanding the release of exiled opponent Roman Protasevich.