Ryanair flight forced to land in Belarus with top activist onboard

Belarus is accused of forcing a Ryanair flight to land so it could arrest a leading blogger who played a role in last year's mass protests against Alexander Lukashenko.

Belarus is accused of forcing a Ryanair passenger plane to land in the country so that authorities could arrest a leading blogger who helped organize last year's protests against the country's authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko. The Ryanair flight was passing through Belarus' airspace while traveling from Athens to Lithuania's capital Vilnius, when it was forced to divert to Minsk for an emergency landing because of a false bomb threat. On the ground, security agents arrested Roman Protasevich, founder of the social media news channel, NEXTA, which played a crucial role in the protests last summer. Belarusian authorities claimed they had responded to a request for help from the flight about a bomb threat onboard. The plane was then escorted by a Belarusian fighter jet to a Minsk airport. But Belarus' opposition and European countries accused Belarusian authorities of using the fake bomb scare to force the plan to land as a part of a pre-planned operation to seize Protasevich.