2024-09-06 14:42 update: 2024-09-06, 14:44
Photo PAP/Leszek Szymanski
Polish prosecutors have charged three Belarussian citizens for forcefully diverting a Polish plane to Minsk in 2021, the National Prosecutor's Office (PK) said on Friday.
Prosecutors will now apply to issue European Arrest Warrants and Interpol's Red Notices, calling worldwide law enforcement to locate and detain the wanted persons, the PK added.
Based on cockpit voice recordings and flight data, as well as crew reports, prosecutors found that three Belarussian air traffic control, air navigation and KGB officers used false claims of a bomb threat to take control over a Polish plane that on May 23, 2021 was on route from Athens to Vilnius. They forced it to make an emergency landing in Minsk, which led to unlawful detention of 132 people and the arrest of Belarussian opposition activist, Raman Pratasevich.
"The real goal was to detain the Belarussian oppositionist Raman Pratasevich in Minsk, which indeed happened," said the PK's press spokesman Przemyslaw Nowak.
Pratasevich, who was arrested in Minsk in May 2021 following the forced landing, is an ex-editor of the opposition media channel Nexta, marked by Belarus as a "terrorist organisation" in 2022. After his arrest, Pratasevich appeared in the state media admitting his mistakes and criticizing other opposition activists, fully admitting his guilt".(PAP)
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