Plane diverted to arrest journalist Roman Protassevich: Belarusian officials charged in US

The story of this diversion to Minsk of a Ryanair flight by a Belarusian fighter plane had gone around the world and alerted Western chancelleries. Seven months later, American justice on Thursday indicted four Belarusian government officials, accused of being behind this coup of May 23: two state security officers as well as the director of Belarusian civil aviation and his deputy. All are residents of Belarus and, in their absence, considered “at large” by American justice.

Manhattan federal prosecutor Damian Williams denounced a “violation of international rules and American criminal law, but also the endangerment of four Americans and other innocent passengers” and undertook to bring to trial “those who participated in this scandalous conspiracy to commit an act of piracy”. Claiming the presence of a bomb on board, the change of itinerary had indeed allowed the Belarusian authorities to arrest an opposition journalist, Roman Protassevich, and his partner Sofia Sapega.

After an international outcry, the United States and the European Union had decided on individual sanctions against several personalities of the Belarusian regime, including President Alexander Lukashenko, and, first for Brussels, economic sanctions.

This new decision, this time on the judicial level, is unprecedented and comes in the midst of renewed tensions between the United States and Russia, an ally of Belarus, around the Ukrainian file. This Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned again that Russia was running the risk of reviving the specter of the Cold War.