The European Union leaders discussed the diversion of the Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania by Belarus, and agreed to a new round of sanctions against the country.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko ordered a jet fighter to force a plane carrying dissident journalist Roman Potasevich, an outspoken critic of the Belarusian authoritarian regime, to land in order to arrest him.
Sanctions include a ban of the country’s airlines from entering the bloc’s airspace and airports.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the EU should adopt tough sanctions to “convey the message that such practices cannot and must not become tolerated on the European continent”.
A video was circulated on social media showing Mr Protasevich wearing a dark sweatshirt. He said he was in a pretrial detention facility in Minsk and was being treated in accordance with the law.
“Right now, I am continuing to cooperate with investigators and making confessions regarding my role in organizing mass unrest in Minsk,” he said.
Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said Mr Protasevich looked as though he had been coerced into making the video..
“This is how Raman looks under physical and moral pressure. I demand the immediate release of Raman and all political prisoners,” she said.
Belarusian transport authorities had said on Monday that Gaza’s governing militant group, Hamas, had sent an email to the Minsk National Airport on 23 May warning that a bomb would explode on the Ryanair flight in order to force the plane to land. There was no bomb on board.
At the Brussels leader summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel dismissed the Belarus government’s explanation for the forced landing of the plane as “completely implausible.”
Mr Protasevich had been on board the plane after a holiday in Greece with his girlfriend, and had also attended the Delphi Economic Forum there. He was returning home to the Lithuanian capital when the plane was forced to land in Belarus, his homeland, from where he fled more than a year ago.
Once the plane landed, police officers with a dog entered the plane and asked Mr Protasevich to take his belongings out of his bag. He removed clothes and a pair of headphones. The customers then were taken to the airprot by bus, where Mr Protasevich was led to the front of the line. He wasn’t on board when the plane was cleared to continue its flight to Vilnius from Athens after an eight hour delay in Minsk.
