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MOSCOW, Could 23 (Reuters) – Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko ordered a Ryanair flight carrying a key opposition blogger and headed for Lithuania to land within the Belarusian capital Minsk on Sunday and detained him on arrival, officers and rights activists mentioned.
Legislation enforcers detained activist Roman Protasevich, placed on a wished listing after final 12 months’s mass road protests following an election during which Lukashenko had claimed a landslide victory.
The plane, flying over Belarus from Athens to Vilnius, had virtually reached Lithuania when it modified path and was escorted to Minsk amid studies that it had explosives on board, in accordance with a web-based flight tracker and BelTA.
No explosives have been discovered, BelTA mentioned.
The Belarus division for organised crime management additionally reported that Protasevich had been detained however then deleted the assertion from its Telegram channel.
Ryanair and the Lithuanian ministry of international affairs had no quick remark.
Lukashenko personally ordered the warplane to escort the Ryanair Boeing to Minsk, state information company BelTA reported.
In energy since 1994, Lukashenko launched a violent crackdown on the 2020 road protests. Round 35,000 individuals have been detained since August, human rights teams say. Dozens have acquired jail phrases. Authorities say that greater than 1,000 prison instances have been opened.
A Lithuanian airport authority spokeswoman instructed Reuters the airplane, scheduled to land in Vilnius at 1100 GMT, was diverted to Minsk attributable to a battle between the crew and a passenger.
The airplane was anticipated to land in Vilnius from Minsk at 1500 GMT, she mentioned.
Protasevich is without doubt one of the founders of the opposition information service NEXTA, a Telegram channel that has change into one of many major sources of stories about demonstrations in Belarus. It’s hostile to Lukashenko and helps to coordinate protests.
Belarusian opposition politician Svetlana Tikhanouskaya, Lukashenko’s major rival on the final election, mentioned Belarus authorities “positioned in danger security of passengers on board and the entire civil aviation for the sake of punishment of the person who was an editor of Belarus’s largest impartial Telegram channel”.
(Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; Enhancing by Nick Macfie)
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