US charges 4 Belarus officials with piracy in forced landing of jet
United States prosecutors in Manhattan have charged four officials of the government of Belarus with conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy in the 2021 forced landing of a European airliner in Minsk, where a prominent opposition journalist aboard the plane was seized. The charge was contained in an indictment filed on Thursday in Federal District Court. In response to a purported bomb threat, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, Belarus’s authoritarian president, sent a fighter jet on May 23 to intercept the Ryanair Boeing 737-800 carrying some 170 passengers from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania — among them the journalist, Roman Protasevich. The forcing down of the plane and his seizure led to international outrage. The bomb threat was a fake, orchestrated by senior Belarus officials who were seeking to detain Protasevich in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, the indictment says. The move was seen as a marker of how far Lukashenko was willing to go to crush dissent and extend his increasingly repressive rule. Lukashenko’s security forces violently suppressed the demonstrations and imprisoned thousands of people, drawing international condemnation. After the Ryanair diversion led to Western sanctions, he attracted thousands of migrants, mostly Afghan, to Belarus and urged them to cross illegally into Poland, trying to create a political crisis for NATO and the European Union. The indictment does not charge Mr. Lukashenko. It names Leonid Mikalaevich Churo, the director general of Belarus’s state air navigation authority; his deputy, Oleg Kazyuchits; and two officers of the country’s security services whose full names were not known to prosecutors. The defendants are based in Belarus and remain at large, the authorities said. As a result, it is unlikely that they will appear in a United States courtroom to answer the charges in the foreseeable future.<br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2022-01-21/general/us-charges-4-belarus-officials-with-piracy-in-forced-landing-of-jet
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US charges 4 Belarus officials with piracy in forced landing of jet
United States prosecutors in Manhattan have charged four officials of the government of Belarus with conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy in the 2021 forced landing of a European airliner in Minsk, where a prominent opposition journalist aboard the plane was seized. The charge was contained in an indictment filed on Thursday in Federal District Court. In response to a purported bomb threat, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, Belarus’s authoritarian president, sent a fighter jet on May 23 to intercept the Ryanair Boeing 737-800 carrying some 170 passengers from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania — among them the journalist, Roman Protasevich. The forcing down of the plane and his seizure led to international outrage. The bomb threat was a fake, orchestrated by senior Belarus officials who were seeking to detain Protasevich in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, the indictment says. The move was seen as a marker of how far Lukashenko was willing to go to crush dissent and extend his increasingly repressive rule. Lukashenko’s security forces violently suppressed the demonstrations and imprisoned thousands of people, drawing international condemnation. After the Ryanair diversion led to Western sanctions, he attracted thousands of migrants, mostly Afghan, to Belarus and urged them to cross illegally into Poland, trying to create a political crisis for NATO and the European Union. The indictment does not charge Mr. Lukashenko. It names Leonid Mikalaevich Churo, the director general of Belarus’s state air navigation authority; his deputy, Oleg Kazyuchits; and two officers of the country’s security services whose full names were not known to prosecutors. The defendants are based in Belarus and remain at large, the authorities said. As a result, it is unlikely that they will appear in a United States courtroom to answer the charges in the foreseeable future.<br/>
