US charges Belarus with air piracy

U.S. prosecutors have said charges have been filed for Belarus government officials they believe were involved in air piracy, following last year’s diversion of a Ryanair flight to arrest an opposition journalist. Belarusian authorities used a bomb scare to get the flight diverted to Belarus where the arrest took place.
The charges announced by federal prosecutors in New York of conspiring to commit aircraft piracy, carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a news release announcing the charges: “Since the dawn of powered flight, countries around the world have cooperated to keep passenger airplanes safe. The defendants shattered those standards by diverting an airplane to further the improper purpose of repressing dissent and free speech.”
Ryanair said Belarusian flight controllers told the pilots there was a bomb threat against the jetliner and ordered it to land in Minsk. The Belarusian military scrambled a MiG-29 fighter jet in an apparent attempt to encourage the crew to comply with the flight controllers orders.
Raman Pratasevich, the journalist arrested, ran a popular messaging app that helped organise mass demonstrations against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. The 26-year-old Pratasevich left Belarus in 2019 where he faced charges of inciting riots.
U.S. President Joe Biden levied new sanctions against Belarus on the one-year anniversary of Lukashenko’s election to a sixth term leading the Eastern European nation, a vote the U.S. and international community said was fraught with irregularities.
Widespread belief that the 2020 vote was stolen triggered mass protests in Belarus that led to increased repressions by Lukashenko’s government on protesters, dissidents and independent media. More than 35,000 people were arrested and thousands were beaten and jailed. The protests lasted for months, petering out only when winter set in.
Two the four charged have been identified as Leonid Mikalaevich Churo, Director General of Belaeronavigatsia Republican Unitary Air Navigation Services Enterprise, the Belarusian state air navigation authority and Oleg Kazyuchits, Deputy Director General of Belaeronavigatsia. The remaining two are Belarusian state security agents whose full identities weren’t known to prosecutors.
U.S. prosecutors described the defendants as fugitives and said they were facing charges of conspiring to commit aircraft piracy, in a case U.S. officials say they have jurisdiction because American citizens were aboard the flight.
EU sanctions, that were implemented immediately after the plane was diverted, remain in place
Belarus have argued that they acted in line with international procedures for bomb threats saying the West reacted rashly. Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed Lukashenko for talks days after the incident and nodded in sympathy as Lukashenko fulminated about the EU sanctions, saying the bloc was trying to destabilise his country.
Whether the charges filed by the U.S. prosecutors against the Belarus citizens for air piracy will ever see the accused being brought to justice, remains to be seen. The case does however allow the country to issue warrants of arrest and to seize assets of those concerned, but it is unlikely to bring about any change in the dictatorship.

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