Poland charges 3 Belarusian officials with diverting a plane to Minsk in 2021 to arrest a dissident

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish prosecutors on Friday charged three Belarusian officials with using a ruse to divert a Poland-registered plane while in flight three years ago and violating the freedom of 132 people on board as they sought to arrest a dissident.

The three officials are accused of ordering the plane carrying a dissident blogger to make an unplanned landing in the Belarus capital of Minsk, leading to the arrest of Raman Pratasevich, a Belarussian blogger who was living in exile in Lithuania at the time.

On May 23, 2021, the Ryanair Flight FR4978 was traveling from Athens, Greece, to the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius and was in Belarus airspace, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the Lithuanian border, when it was told to change direction and turn toward Minsk.

On instructions from the officials, the Belarusian flight controllers told the pilots there was a bomb threat against the jetliner and ordered them to land in Minsk. The Belarusian military scrambled a MiG-29 fighter jet in an apparent attempt to make the crew to comply with the order.

The prosecutors in Poland said in a statement Friday that because the three Belarussian officials are not in Poland, they couldn't present them with the charges and have issued a search warrant for them. They are also seeking a European arrest warrant.

According to Polish privacy law, they identified the three men only by their first names and initials as Leonid C., a former head of Belarus air navigation, Yevgenii T., an air controller in charge at Minsk airport at the time, and Andrei A.M. the head of the Belarus State Security Committee, or KGB.

The three are charged with using a false bomb threat to divert the plane and violating the freedom of the people on board, including some Polish citizens.

Belarus officials pulled Pratesevich off the plane, which was then allowed to travel on. The dissident was put on trial and sentenced to eight years in prison after being convicted of organizing mass protests following the disputed 2020 presidential election that gave authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko a sixth term in office.

Pratasevich, who ran a Telegram messaging app channel widely used by participants in the protests, was pardoned in 2023.

The prosecutors said their case was based on recordings from the plane's cockpit and flight recorders, as well as on the testimonies from the pilots and witnesses. The aim of the diversion was to arrest Pratasevich, they said.

According to Gazeta Wyborcza daily, the prosecutors also drew information from secretly taped conversations at the Minsk control tower, where officials were instructing controllers to divert the plane. One of the controllers reportedly recorded the conversations and later made them available to the prosecutors.

Western countries said the plane's diversion was tantamount to hijacking and imposed strong sanctions against Lukashenko and Belarus.

If brought before a court in Poland, the three officials could face up to five years in a Polish prison.