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US government officials have accused four Belarusian government officials of aviation piracy for forcing a Ryanair flight to Lithuania to land in Minsk last year in order to arrest the opposition leader.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday said officials had hatched a plot in May to exploit the threat of a fake bomb. Remove the Ryanair FR4978 aircraft, which carried more than 100 people including the opponent Roman Protasevich, a colleague and four Americans.
The accused in the case were Leonid Mikalaevich Churo, head of the Belarus Air Navigation Authority; Oleg Kazyuchits, deputy director; and two Belarusian state security officials: Andrey Anatolievich, whose last name is unknown, is the second unnamed person. They all live in Belarus and still live in large numbers, according to the justice department.
Damian Williams, a U.S. attorney for the state of New York who was one of the government officials who announced the case, stated: “Since the launch of the airplane, countries around the world have agreed to take off aircraft. people should be safe. “The defendants violated the rules by diverting the aircraft to achieve unreasonable goals to prevent violations of the right to free speech.”
The case also focuses on the conflicts that sparked global violence and led to punishments against Belarus, when powerful President Alexander Lukashenko thwarted independent and opposition journalists to maintain power.
U.S. officials say Churo personally warned workers at the Minsk air traffic control center of a bomb threat before the flight took off in Athens, and advised them to turn the plane to Minsk in response.
According to the Department of Justice, Kazyuchits is said to have instructed Belarus aviation authorities to file reports of the change to cover up lies about the bomb threat and the role of security in repairing the aircraft.
According to a statement from the presidential candidate on the Telegraph during the game, Lukasjenko issued an “unchanging order to turn the plane around”.
Protasevich is a former editor of Nexta, a Warsaw publishing group that plays a great responsibility in describing and directing large-scale protests that began against Lukashenko in 2020 after the dictator claimed victory in what many people consider to be a non-democratic election.
The Belarusian Justice Department said Belarusian officials – some of whom were wearing sloping masks and carrying guns – met people who boarded tarred planes in Minsk and ordered them to board buses.
Arrested as soon as they arrived at the scene, one group of passengers – including “Man-2”, known as Protasevich’s colleague – were placed in a narrow lane for three hours, the justice department said.
The so-called “Individual-1” is a US official and it is understood that Protasevich, as well as his colleague, is being escorted and escorted. imprisonment.
Aircraft piracy case carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison as well as a life sentence in prison.
Belarussian aviation authorities and the country’s Defense Committee were not immediately available for comment.
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