WaPo is using the exactly correct phrase, "State Sponsored Hijacking;"
Earlier Sunday, Ryanair Flight 4978 from Greece to Lithuania was over Belarusian airspace, when it was contacted by local air traffic control. The controllers claimed that there might be a bomb on board and ordered the plane to land in Minsk, Belarus’s capital city.The evidence suggests they were concerned with a very different threat — to the regime of Belarus’s longtime autocratic ruler, Alexander Lukashenko. One of the passengers on the plane was an opposition journalist, Roman Protasevich, whom Belarusian authorities wanted to take into custody. According to reported eyewitnesses: “One guy was very distressed [when we were diverted to Minsk]. Later we were taken out of the plane in groups of 4. He told us who he was and added ‘I am facing a death penalty here.’ He was accompanied by military all the time.”
His name is Roman Protasevich ... a co-founder and a former editor of the NEXTA channel on the social media platform Telegram, which has become a popular conduit for Mr. Lukashenko’s foes to share information and organize demonstrations against the government.He fled the country in 2019, fearing arrest. But he has continued to roil Mr. Lukashenko’s regime while living in exile in Lithuania, so much so that he was charged in November with inciting public disorder and social hatred.As a teenager, Mr. Protasevich became a dissident, first drawing scrutiny from law enforcement. He was expelled from a prestigious school for participating in a protest rally in 2011 and later was expelled from the journalism program of the Minsk State University.
1 comment:
First steps are obvious, reroute all air traffic around Belarus to prevent future repeats, and block Belarus airways (luckily there is only single , state owned enterprise of its kind) from entering EU airpsace. Work sanctions upwards from there...
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