A Polish investigation has established that there was “no bomb threat” on a Ryanair plane that made an emergency landing in Minsk earlier this year, allowing Belarusian authorities to arrest opposition blogger Raman Pratasevich and his girlfriend.
The National Public Prosecutor's Office, which oversaw the probe, said in a statement on December 9 that “the whole situation was only an excuse to force the pilot to land” in the Belarusian capital.
Pratasevich and Russian citizen Sofia Sapega were arrested on May 23 when authoritarian Belarusian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka scrambled a military jet to escort the Ryanair passenger flight over its airspace to land in Minsk.
Many countries regarded the act as a "state hijacking" while the plane was flying from Athens to the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.
No bomb was found onboard, despite Belarusian claims that they had received an e-mail warning them about the existence of explosives on the flight.
The move sparked international outrage and demands for the release of Pratasevich and Sapega.
Lukashenka's regime was already internationally isolated over its brutal crackdown the country's pro-democracy movement following last year’s disputed presidential election.
Polish prosecutors said passengers and airline representatives were questioned as witnesses in the course of the investigation conducted by the country’s domestic counterintelligence agency. The plane was also inspected, and pilot recordings analyzed.
“The findings of the investigation so far show that on May 23, 2021, an officer of the Belarusian KGB was in the air traffic control tower in Minsk, [and] instructed the air traffic controller who had contact with the pilot of the plane,” according to the statement.
The KGB officer was “in constant contact by telephone” with a person to whom he was reporting on the situation, it said.
The UN’s civil aviation agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization, said last month that results of a fact-finding mission into the incident will not be released until its next session in January next year.
Pratasevich faces charges of playing a role in civil disturbances that followed a disputed presidential election in August 2020. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.
Sapega could face up to six years in prison.
Pratasevich was a key administrator of the Telegram channel Nexta-Live, which has been covering mass protests against the official results of the election that handed Lukashenka a sixth presidential term despite widespread criticism that the vote was rigged.
The European Union, United States, and other countries have slapped several rounds of coordinated sanctions on Belarus.
