Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Sunday, May 23, appealed to the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, with a request to consider the introduction of sanctions against the Belarusian authorities over the incident with the Ryanair plane.
The head of the Polish government proposed to discuss this topic at the upcoming EU summit on Monday.
"I have asked the President of the European Council to expand the agenda of tomorrow's European Council with an item on immediate sanctions against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko. The hijacking of a civilian plane is an unprecedented act of state terrorism that cannot go unpunished, " Morawiecki wrote on Twitter.
Thus, he commented on the detention of Roman Protasevich, the founder of the Telegram channel Nexta, recognized as an extremist in Belarus, who was on board the plane. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus confirmed the fact of Protasevich's detention at the Minsk airport.
On the same day, it became known that the Investigative Committee of Belarus opened a criminal case on the fact of a false report about the mining of an emergency plane of the Ryanair airline.
It was reported that on the afternoon of May 23, the UK received information about the mining of an aircraft flying from Athens to Vilnius. To verify this data, the aircraft landed at the Minsk National Airport. The Interior Ministry's sapper and pyrotechnic team and the investigative task force were sent to the scene, and no explosive devices were found during the inspection.
According to journalists, the message about the bomb threat came to the mail of the airport's call center. A MiG-29 fighter jet was raised to accompany the plane that landed in Minsk urgently.
Lina Beishene, a representative of the state-owned company Lietuvos oro uostai, noted on Sunday that the plane made an emergency landing at the Minsk airport due to a conflict between a passenger and one of the crew members.
On March 27, the department of the Investigative Committee for Minsk initiated the recognition of the editorial office of the Telegram channel Nexta as a foreign extremist organization and the prohibition of its activities on the territory of Belarus.
In December 2020, the KGB of Belarus included the creator of Nexta, Stepan Putilo and Protasevich, in the list of organizations and individuals involved in terrorist activities. The Belarusian Foreign Ministry appealed to Poland with a demand to extradite both citizens as soon as possible.
