EU Fury Mounts After Belarus Forces Plane Carrying Fugitive Journalist to Land

European leaders are vowing to punish Belarus for illegally diverting to Minsk Sunday a Lithuanian-bound Ryanair flight carrying a fugitive critic of Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko. 

Their fury was fueled as more details emerged Monday of the dramatic events leading up to the diversion of the plane. The Ryanair Boeing 737 was carrying 171 passengers and crew had taken off from Athens and was flying over Belarus. It was just moments from leaving Belarusian air space when the captain was signaled by the pilot of a Belarus MiG-29 jet to land in the Belarus capital and not to proceed to the scheduled destination, Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital.    When the plane landed in Minsk, Belarusian security service officers detained 26-year-old opposition blogger Raman Pratasevich, who could face a death sentence on charges of helping to organize protests against President Lukashenko. Just before the aircraft landed, he gave his laptop and cell phone to a friend for safekeeping, passengers told reporters in Vilnius.     Pratasevich’s girlfriend, Sofia, was also detained. And reports emerged Monday of another detainee.