Ryanair ‘hijacking’ news: Arrested journalist makes video statement as EU to sanction Belarus

Ahead of a meeting of the European Council, at which possible sanctions against Belarus will be discussed, Ireland's foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney said any measures must have a “real edge”, as he called for an independent and international inquiry into the incident.

On the idea of closing Belarusian airspace, Mr Coveney said: “I certainly think that that would be a very strong response and in principle I have no issue with that.”

“I think the sanctions need to be fully thought through in terms of consequences, but I think this is an incident that is on the upper end of the scale in terms of something that needs a very strong sanction-based response,” he added.

“We cannot allow this incident to pass on the basis of warnings or strong press releases.

“I think there has to be a real edge to the sanctions that are applied on the back of this, so that we're sending a very strong signal that EU airlines cannot be targeted by state-sponsored aviation piracy, which is essentially what's happened here.”

He also lent further credence to claims that several security members may have been on the plane when it was forced to land in Minsk, saying: “Five or six people effectively left the plane. Only one of them was arrested, which would suggest that the others were secret service people.”

The UK’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab has called for Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko to be “held to account for his outlandish actions”.

“The UK condemns yesterday's actions by the Belarusian authorities, who arrested journalist Roman Protasevich on the basis of a ruse, having forced his flight to land in Minsk,” Mr Raab said.

He added that London is calling for the “immediate release of Mr Protasevich and other political prisoners held in Belarus” and that the UK was working with its allies “on a co-ordinated response, including further sanctions”.

Mr Raab also called for the International Civil Aviation Organisation council to meet urgently “to consider the regime's flouting of the international rules safeguarding civil aviation”.

Our Moscow Correspondent Oliver Carroll points out that it would not be the first time Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko’s regime has intervened in a civilian flight in recent years.

According to his report on the grounding of a Belavia Airlines flight to Munich in January 2020, law enforcement officers boarded the plane after it was rediverted to Grodno in western Belarus and picked a total of eight people off the plane – three men and their families.

On the same day, rumours started to emerge about the disappearance of the top managers of Belarus’s four sugar factories.

It took nearly two weeks for Mr Lukashenko to comment on what he described as an “unprecedented” anti-corruption operation, accusing the unnamed arrested men of setting up a trading “scam”.

A Russian foreign ministry spokesperson has accused the West of hypocrisy in its outraged response to the diversion of an airliner to the Belarusian capital Minsk.

“It is shocking that the West calls the incident in Belarusian airspace ‘shocking’,” Maria Zakharova wrote on Facebook.

“Either [they] should be shocked by ... the forced [landing] in Austria of the Bolivian president's plane at the request of the United States ... Or [they] should not be shocked by similar behaviour by others.”

The spokesperson refers to the grounding of then Bolivian president Evo Morales’ jet in 2013 amid flawed suspicions that US-sought whistleblower Edward Snowden was onboard.

At the time, Bolivian vice president Alvaro Garcia described Mr Morales as having been “kidnapped by imperialism” in the incident, which also implicated Spain, France, Portugal and Italy.

Bolivia’s then defence minister Ruben Saavedra, who was onboard, alleged the grounding of the plane was “a hostile act by the United States state department which has used various European governments”.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki – who was a state department spokesperson at the time – conceded the following day that the US had “been in contact with a range of countries that had a chance of having Snowden land or travel through their country”.

“I think it was very frightening for the crew, for the passengers who were held under armed guard, had their bags searched, when it was clear it appears that the intent ... was to remove a journalist and his travelling companion,” Ryanair’s chief executive Michael O'Leary told Irish Newstalk radio.

“We believe there was also some KGB agents offloaded off the aircraft as well.”

He said his airline would take guidance from European authorities on flying in Belarusian airspace, but that Ryanair had few flights crossing Belarus, and it would be a “very minor adjustment” to fly over Poland instead.

“This was a flight between two NATO members and between two EU members,” Westminster’s foreign affairs committee chairman Tom Tugendhat has told BBC Radio.

“If it's not an act of war, it's certainly a warlike act.”

Belarus’s exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has said that, following journalist Roman Protasevich’s arrest in Minsk, she fears “not only for his freedom, but for his life”.

Speaking to Sky News of Mr Protasevich’s arrest, she said her team’s lawyers were trying to reach the journalist in prison, adding: “We don’t know the updated information at the moment, but I am sure that he is in awful circumstances.

“I am sure that he has been tortured, because he knows a lot of information. He was a leader of one famous Telegram channel about civil society, about the situation in Belarus, and he is considered to be like [a] private enemy of Lukashenko.

“So we are really afraid not only for his freedom, but for his life.”

Ms Tsikhanouskaya’s defeat last year in presidential elections against incumbent ruler of 26 years Alexander Lukashenko was followed by mass protests, amid accusations of a rigged poll.

The former English teacher – whose blogger husband was jailed and barred from entering last year’s presidential race – fled to Lithuania shortly after the vote. In March, Belarusian authorities opened a criminal case against her on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act.

Our Moscow correspondent Oliver Carroll has this profile on the man detained in Minsk yesterday.

He reports that, as a former editor and co-founder of Nexta (”someone”), the pre-eminent opposition platform during last year’s protests, Roman Protasevich regularly invoked the president’s ire when he was at his weakest.

As the Belarusian opposition staged an improbable campaign to unseat the 26-year dictator following last August’s elections that Lukashenko likely lost by a landslide, Mr Protasevich’s Nexta was the go-to platform for information.

It published incriminating videos of state violence and leaked personal details of riot police officers identified in Mr Lukashenko’s brutal crackdown.

At around 3:30pm, UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab will answer an urgent question in the House of Commons on the situation in Belarus, raised by foreign affairs committee chair Tom Tugendhat.

Airlines appear to be avoiding Belarus airspace following yesterday’s incident, Cathy Adams reports.

According to data from tracking platform Flight Radar 24, airlines can be seen skirting the Belarusian territory.