DISINFO: Diversion of Ryanair flight was appropriate and perfectly legal, not coerced
SUMMARY
On 23 May 2021, it was announced that there was a bomb threat on board a Ryanair passenger flight travelling from Athens to Vilnius. At this moment, the plane was flying over Belarus and requested to make an emergency landing as per the standard procedure. By request of the crew, the plane landed in Minsk and was escorted by a Belorussian MiG-29 fighter jet on the way there. The escort was provided in case the passenger plane had been hijacked by terrorists and weaponised. No bomb was found on the plane once it landed, but it turned out that Roman Pratasevich was onboard. In November 2020, Pratasevich was added to the Belorussian KGB’s terrorist blacklist for his coordination of the protests that followed the Belorussian presidential elections in August 2020.
European countries expressed distress at what happened. But from a formal perspective, everything was legal. The Ryanair staff acted according to procedure and volunteered to land the plane in Minsk. While Vilnius was closer, the staff demanded that they land in Minsk.
RESPONSE
Disinformation about the forced diversion and landing of Ryanair flight 4978 in Belarus.
On Sunday, May 23, 2021, the Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania was forced to turn back before crossing the Lithuanian border and land in the Belarusian capital. The pretext for landing in Minsk was a false report about the bomb on board. At the moment when the plane changed course, it was closer to Vilnius airport than to Minsk. The plane was forced by a Belarusian military aircraft to land in Minsk. Roman Protasevich was detained during a repeated security check of passengers.
The EU condemned Belarusian action against civil plane and the detention of Pratasevich. In a declaration on behalf of the EU on the forced diversion of Ryanair flight FR4978 to Minsk on 23 May 2021, the High Representative called for the immediate release of Mr Pratasevich. This was followed by a European Council statement, in which the EU leaders called for targeted individual and economic sanctions as well as to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines and prevent access to EU airports of flights operated by these.
The UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has opened an official investigation into the case, expressing concerns the diversion may have breached the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation.
Related cases of disinformation in the database claim that Belarus acted in strict accordance with international law in the Ryanair incident, that the Security Service of Ukraine could have set up the detainment of Pratasevich to harm Belarus, that Hamas sent an e-email to Minsk airport threatening to blow up a Ryanair flight over Vilnius, that Belarus defended Europe against a terror attack, allowing the Ryanair plane to land at Minsk, and that Lukashenko had to redirect the plane since Europe refused to hand over Pratasevich.