Between 9:50 and 10:00 hours on May 23, 2021, two men entered the Minsk air traffic hub.
They were there to deliver a message: There is a bomb on Ryanair Flight 4978 from Athens to Vilnius, which is expected to fly over Belarusian airspace soon.
Except it’s a lie.
The bomb risk prompted the pilots to go into mandatory protection protocols and land the Boeing 737-800 in Minsk. Once on land, two of his passengers, opposition journalist Roman Protasevich and his Russian girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, were detained.
The incident sparked foreign outrage and saw Belarus hit with EU sanctions. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called it “outrageous and illegal behavior,” while Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called the incident an “unprecedented act of state terrorism” that could simply happen. unpunished.
The United Nations aviation agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), responded by launching an investigation and concluded in January this year that the bomb risk was “deliberately false. “He then extended the investigation in light of some “missing facts” and new information.
Among the new data is the testimony of the Minsk air traffic controller who guided the Ryanair pilot through the hijacking to the Belarusian capital, and a recording he made on his phone of his verbal exchange with the pilot.
The follow-up report, received via POLITICO, describes in detail what happened that day, implicating Belarusian officials.
In his interview with the UN agency, the ler, who remains anonymous in the report, recalls that two men entered the center of Minsk about half an hour after starting their shift on that fateful Sunday.
He knew one of them as Leonid Churo, CEO of Belaeronavigatsia, the country’s air navigation service provider. He suspected the other worked for the Belarusian security services, known as KGBs.
The two men approached the service supervisor, who then informed the controller and another colleague that a Ryanair plane was about to enter Belarusian airspace from Ukraine.
The manager discussed an alleged bomb threat against the robbery and that the plane was going to be hijacked, but dissuaded him from informing the outlet in Lviv, in neighboring Ukraine.
Meanwhile, a flurry of emails were sent to European airports, from Sofia to Bucharest, Athens and Minsk. Each carried the same message, claiming to come from “Hamas soldiers” and warning that a bomb would explode over Vilnius if the demands were not met. Hamas, a terrorist group, has denied any involvement.
The air smuggler pulled out his phone to record his call with the Ryanair pilot, he said, because he feared the same old air traffic messages would be destroyed.
The recording captures not only his verbal exchange with the pilot, but also the ongoing contribution of the manager and alleged member of Belarus’ security facility as they trained him on what to say about the duration of the 39-minute verbal exchange with the plane.
The transcript, shared with POLITICO, shows that the controller practiced the message he intended to convey to the pilots aboard Flight 4978, a sign that what he said was not spontaneous.
“We have special data that you have a bomb on board. This bomb can be activated over Vilnius,” he told the Ryanair pilot.
But an aside captured through the phone recording emphasized that what the controller said staged: ‘Say ‘for protection reasons,'” the manager told the controller before contacting the pilots.
The pilot became suspicious of what the controller told him and asked for more data. “The bomb. . . Where does the threatening message come from? Where did you get the data from this?”
The alleged KGB officer and manager then sent lines to the ler. After a complicated back and forth between the three men in the tower, the ler was ordered to tell Ryanair that the risk came from email, transmitted to the room via the airport. . The true origin of the emails is unclear. The ICAO report says the email to Minsk was only sent when the plane had already begun its descent towards the airport.
The Ryanair pilot sought more information about the email before asking how he hijacked the plane.
This led to another stampede to figure out how to react in the tower. “So, tell me, what can I say?” The ler asked the two men.
Finally, the pilot asked: “I have to ask you a question, what is the risk code. . . is it green, yellow or orange or red?”
“He asks, is the message code yellow or red?” the controller told the two men.
An unidentified guy said, “Well, let it be red, the red one. “
As the Ryanair pilot pondered his next move, the transcript shows more frantic discussions in the middle as the plane was about to cross the border into Belarus and enter Lithuanian airspace.
The alleged protection officer replied: “Yes, [name withheld]. He hasn’t taken a [resolution] yet, there are a few minutes left before we leave our area. . . near the state border. Well, yes, the pilot asks. “what is the yellow or red color, in spite of everything [the color], of danger. The controller says red. The pilot is making a resolution so far. . . Well. . . Well. . . maybe they [Ryanair crew] are intentionally betting to buy time, who knows.
But in the end, the pilot believed what the Minsk tower said and said: “MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY. . . our intentions would be to divert to Minsk airport. “
The Ryanair flight landed at Minsk airport.
Once on the ground, it is transparent that this is not a general fun.
Ryanair called the Minsk government 12 times in a span of two hours before and after the plane landed to verify and get more data about the threat, adding that it requested a copy of the email (which it did not provide).
Eventually, the government allowed the crew and passengers to board their plane to continue the flight. But not everyone succeeded. Before takeoff, the cabin crew conducted a passenger count and found that five were missing. But the floor staff at Minsk airport did not provide any explanation to the Ryanair team, and the plane took off leaving the five passengers behind. Among them was the Belarusian journalist. Protasevich and his Russian girlfriend.
The report does not identify the other 3 passengers – to say that of the five, 3 were Belarusians, one Russian and one Greek – but Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary said without delay afterwards that he believed Belarusian KGB agents were travelling on the plane. plane and was disembarked at the airport.
If Belarusian authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko thought everyone would temporarily talk about the incident, he was wrong: he cemented his regime’s outlaw status.
After the stolen election in 2020, when Lukashenko cheated to return to power, he faced foreign sanctions and isolation. The Ryanair incident, characterized as a hijacking by EU officials, imposed even more measures against Belarus. The public airline Belavia has been banned from European airspace and US prosecutors have charged 4 Belarusian government officials with air piracy.
ICAO has obtained much assistance in its investigations from the Belarusian authorities.
Very few photographs were provided to investigators of passengers getting off the flight or at the airport. The Belarusian government said this because the video file was only stored for 30 days.
But video recordings made through passengers show a guy on the ramp as passengers disembark. The air traffic controller knew him as the alleged KGB officer.
Data obtained through foreign researchers are also dubious.
A transcript, included in the ICAO report received through POLITICO, captured a verbal exchange between the deputy director general, the service manager and the Belaeronavigatsia controller, a week after the crash landing. In it, the deputy head of authority encourages the couple to make some “adjustments. “” in their incident reports.
The ICAO, however, concluded that the hijacking of Belarus was “an act of illegal interference”, was intentionally false and endangered the protection of the Ryanair flight.
Belarusian officials rejected the report, saying it “stands up to scrutiny. “Officials from Belarus and Russia, a best friend of Minsk’s, also expressed doubts about the authenticity of the narrative shared through the air traffic controller.
The report has been transmitted to the United Nations for its consideration. Several countries, the United States, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus have opened their own investigations.
Protasevich has been placed under space arrest pending trial. Their current scenario is unclear. In January, he appeared before pro-government media and said he was no longer under space arrest.
Sapega, sentenced to six years in prison, asked for his pardon in a letter in late June, asking Lukashenko for clemency.
Log in to the content and manage your profile. If you don’t have an account, you can register here.
Forgot your password?