US charges 4 Belarusian officials with piracy for diverting flight to arrest journalist

Prosecutors in the United States have charged Belarusian government officials with aircraft piracy for diverting a Ryanair flight to arrest a dissident journalist in May 2021. The prosecutors alleged that Belarusian officials used false bomb threats to unlawfully divert a passenger flight carrying US citizens to arrest the Belarusian dissident. Leonid Mikalavich Churo, the Director-General of Belaeronavigatsia Republican Unitary Air Navigation Services Enterprise, Oleg Kazyuchits and two other Belarusian government officials are defendants in the case and remain in Belarus at large.

On 23 May 2021, the original route of the Ryanair flight was between Athens, Greece, and Vilnius, Lithuania; however, the flight was diverted to the Belarusian capital, Minsk. The flight was diverted to Belarus by air traffic control authorities in the country in response to a bomb threat onboard the aircraft. The statement from the US Department of Justice (DoJ) stated that there was no threat of a bomb on board the flight and alleged the Belarusian authorities of fabricating the threat to have control over the flight and divert it to Minsk.

Flight diverted to arrest Belarusian journalist 

According to the US DoJ statement, the Belarusian government diverted the aircraft to Minsk in order to arrest a Belarusian journalist and political activist who criticised the President Alexander Lukashenko-led government. Roman Pratasevich, the journalist who was arrested, ran a messaging app that helped in organising mass protests against the Belarusian President, BBC reported. Pratasevich was charged in 2020 for "organising mass riots." As per the DoJ statement, the plan to divert the flight was executed by officers of the Belarusian state security services in coordination with senior officials of the Belarusian state air navigation authority. 

US prosecutors have alleged that Leonid Churo "personally communicated" the fake bomb threat to staff at the Minsk air traffic control centre before Ryanair Flight 4978 was in the air. In addition, Churo and another official directed that the flight be diverted to Minsk. US Attorney Damian Williams said that the nations have cooperated to keep passenger flights safe, however, the defendants "shattered those standards by diverting an airplane to further the improper purpose of repressing dissent and free speech." 

"We are committed to holding accountable these central participants in a shocking conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy that not only violated international norms and US criminal law, but also potentially endangered the lives of four US citizens and scores of other innocent passengers on board," US Attorney Damian William said in a press release.        

(Image: AP)