Bomb On Board

A Belarusian dog handler checking luggage from a Ryanair flight at Minsk International Airport on Sunday.   Credit...Onliner.by/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Belarus made use of a ruse to convince the pilot of a Ryanair flight en route from Greece to Lithuania that it would be in the best interests of all on board to cut the flight short by landing in Minsk with the claim there was a security threat aboard the plane and there was no time to be lost. For good measure, a Belarusian MiG was scrambled to intercept the passenger flight headed to Vilnius. All for the purpose of apprehending a Belarusian journalist who had run afoul of Belarus's President Alexander Lukashenko by disputing the legality of a discredited 2020 election that resulted in mass street demonstrations by outraged Belarusians. 

 

The young journalist aboard the Ryanair flight, along with his girlfriend, a Russian photographer, had also been involved in organizing some of those demonstrations and in editing an online magazine critical of the longtime Belarusian dictator. Roman Protasevich, 26, was charged with being a 'terrorist', becoming a wanted man, which convinced him to leave Belarus and redomicile himself safely in Lithuania. Sofia Sapega was attending university in Vilnius. So much for the best-laid plans of mice and men, and journalists who run afoul of tyrants.

Minsk air traffic control, according to transcripts acquired by Reuters, informed the plane's pilot that a bomb was aboard his plane, to be activated over Vilnius.

Pilot: Standby

Pilot: OK, could you repeat the message?

ATC: I say again, we have information from special services that you have bomb on board. That bomb can be activated over Vilnius.

Pilot: Roger that, standby.

ATC: For security reason we recommend you to land at UMMS [ICAO code for Minsk airport].

Pilot: OK ... that ... it ... understood give us alternate please.

Pilot: The bomb ... direct message, where did it come from? Where did you have information about it from?

ATC: Standby please.

Pilot: Go ahead.

ATC: Airport security staff informed they received email.

Pilot: Roger, Vilnius airport security staff or from Greece?

ATC: This email was shared to several airports.

Pilot: Did you say that your recommendation? 

ATC: Advise your decision please.

Pilot: I need answer the question: what is the code of the [unreadable] green, yellow or amber, red.

ATC: Standby.

ATC: They say code is red.

Pilot: Roger that. In that case we request holding at present position.

ATC: Roger, hold over your position, maintain FL390 turns at own discretion.

Pilot: OK holding at our discretion at present position maintaining FL390.

Pilot: We are declaring an emergency MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY RYR 1TZ. Our intentions would be to divert to Minsk airport.

ATC: RYR 2TZ MYDAY, Roger. Standby for vectors.

And so, when the pilot announced on the plane's intercom that the plane was being diverted to Minsk, the reaction from the journalist was instant for he, among all the passengers who panicked over the highly unusual, inexplicable sudden change in destination, fearing the plane's physical integrity to have been compromised through some kind of emergency, knew otherwise. The emergency was his alone. And he visualized his arrest, incarceration, questioning, torture, sentence. Death sentence for 'treason'. 

"Belarus is Europe's last dictatorship, this continent's last country that has still not managed to shrug off the dark legacy of the Soviet regime, to overcome the terrible traumas totalitarianism brought upon our nation."

Belarusian-Canadian Ivonka Survilla, head RADA Belarusian government-in-exile

 

"[The exiled government is a] non-material relic of sorts."

"[The Belarusian government-in-exile almost gave its blessing to the country's first post-Soviet government in 1990, but did not because] the signs of how the present regime would come into being were already evident."

"We can only give the mandate once. That's why it is necessary to wait for the moment when full-fledged and independent democratic institutes are set up [in Belarus]."

Ales Cajcyc, RADA Information Secretary

 

"He [Roman Protasevich] said that he was treated lawfully [speaking from an unknown prison in a video released to the public by Belarusian authorities], but he's clearly beaten and under pressure."

"There is no doubt that he was tortured. He was taken hostage."

Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatiana Tsikhanouskaya

Roman Protasevich being detained by  police officers in Minsk, Belarus, in 2017.  Credit...Sergei Grits/Associated Press