Polish prosecutors have announced that they wish to bring charges against three Belarusian officials over their role in the forced landing in 2021 of a Ryanair flight carrying Belarusian opposition activist Roman Protasevich, who was then detained along with his Russian partner Sofia Sapega.
In the coming days, the prosecutors will file a motion for European Arrest Warrants to be issued for the suspects and will request that Interpol initiate a search for them.
Prokurator uzyskał dowody pozwalające na przedstawienie trzem obywatelom Białorusi zarzutów związanych z podstępnym przejęciem w dniu 23 maja 2021 kontroli nad polskim samolotem i wymuszeniem awaryjnego lądowania w Mińsku. 🔽https://t.co/SQ45gF3bPR
— Prokuratura (@PK_GOV_PL) September 6, 2024
The case in question saw the Belarusian authorities use a false bomb threat to divert a flight carrying Protasevich and Sapega from Athens to Vilnius. After the plane was forced to land in Minsk, the pair were detained, interrogated and later handed prison sentences.
Belarus’s actions were widely condemned by the international community, with Poland at the time calling them “an act of state terrorism” against political opponents of the regime. Protasevich had fled to Poland in 2019 and sought political asylum there.
Today, Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office announced that an investigation into the case – carried out in cooperation with Lithuania and Eurojust, the EU’s agency for judicial cooperation – has led them to seek charges against three individuals (whose surnames are hidden under Polish privacy law).
One, Leonid C., is the former director of Belarus’s air navigation agency; another, Yevgenia T., was the head of the air traffic control shift in Minsk at the time of the flight; and the third, Andrey A.M., is described as a head of the Belarusian KGB.
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“The charges relate to seizing control of the Ryanair Athens-Vilnius flight…through the use of deception by giving the plane’s crew false information about an alleged explosive device on board and a threat of explosion over Lithuanian territory,” wrote the Polish prosecutors.
They added that, as a result, 132 people on board, including Polish citizens, were unlawfully deprived of liberty.
The prosecutors note that, because the suspects are not in Poland, it is not possible to present them with charges. As such, a court motion will be filed to obtain arrest warrants, including European ones. A request will also be made for Interpol to issue a Red Notice for the suspects to be detained and extradited.
Polish media report that prosecutors were able to identify the individuals involved in diverting the plane thanks to evidence provided by a Belarusian air traffic controller who fled to Poland in 2021.
The forced landing of a Ryanair flight in Minsk "can be interpreted as state terrorism", an investigation by Poland has found
The bomb threat used to ground the plane was fake and the operation was a pretext to detain opposition activist Roman Protasevich https://t.co/5ToLiGRXZy
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) December 10, 2021
Main image credit: Dawid Zuchowicz / Agencja Wyborcza.pl
Agata Pyka is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a journalist and a political communication student at the University of Amsterdam. She specialises in Polish and European politics as well as investigative journalism and has previously written for Euractiv and The European Correspondent.
