NYT: Minsk air traffic controller flees to Poland, reveals details of KGB operation to land Ryanair plane
During the migration crisis at the Belarusian-Polish border, Polish special services met a Belarusian migrant who worked as an air traffic controller at Minsk Airport. It was him who revealed the details of the forced landing of the Ryanair plane on which opposition blogger Raman Pratasevich and his friend Sofia Sapega were flying, the New York Times reports.
The former aviation specialist has reportedly provided European security officials with specified evidence that the Belarusian authorities informed the Ryanair crew of a bomb threat on that day. According to him, the special operation to capture Pratasevich was supervised by an officer of the Belarusian State Security Committee (KGB).
“Shortly before diverting the plane, the KGB officer was in the control tower, giving instructions to the air traffic controllers. In the course of the incident, he ‘was on the phone with someone whom he told about what was happening to the plane,” the New York Times quotes Stanisław Żaryn, Spokesman for Poland’s Minister-Coordinator of Special Services.
As reported earlier, it is Aleh Halehau [Oleg Galegov] who was on duty as an traffic controller at Minsk Airport when the plane was landing the the Belarusian capital city. In the wake of the widely-reported incident, he went on holiday and deleted all his social media profiles. He was believed to have left for Georgia because he is a Georgian-born. At first, the former air traffic controller contacted the US Embassy in Warsaw, but the American side forwarded him to the Polish authorities, the NYT says.
The story of the fugitive attaches weight to the West’s accusing the Belarusian authorities of de facto hijacking the plane. In addition, the witness will be of help to Polish prosecutors in opening a case against Belarusian officials; the eyewitness’ testimony and records that he brought to Poland are to become part of the would-be case. The documents handed over to the Polish authorities give an account of what was going on in the Minsk control tower.
On May 23, a Ryanair’s Boeing 737-8AS flying over Belarus was forced to land in Minsk by the local authorities claiming that they got the information about a bomb planted onboard. Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka personally gave the order; to ‘escort’ the passenger carrier, a MiG-29 fighter was scrambled. It should be noted that the plane was not far from the Belarusian-Lithuanian air border at that moment; it was at a distance of 90 km from Vilnius and about 200 km – from Minsk. Emigre journalist Raman Pratasevich and his companion Sofia Sapega were arrested by security services in the Belarusian capital city. The operation of forcibly landing the Ryanair airplane seems to have been deliberately planned and performed by pro-Lukashenka secret services.
In response, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary slammed Belarusian officials, labelling the steps taken by them as ‘state-sponsored hijacking’. The outrageous incident has triggered a mighty international row. Politicians, diplomats, international organisations denounced the actions of the Lukashenka regime. In the wake of the controversial situation, the Council of the European Union decided to strengthen the existing restrictive measures in view of the situation in Belarus by introducing a ban on the overflight of EU airspace and on access to EU airports by Belarusian carriers of all kinds.
On June 24, the European Union imposed targeted sanctions on a number of pillars of the Belarusian economy in order to respond, among other things, to the forced landing of the Ryanair flight in Minsk and the related detention of Pratasevich an Sapega. Three days earlier, the EU approved the fourth package of personal sanctions against the Belarusian regime. The bloc froze assets and imposed visa bans on 78 Belarusian officials (including members of Lukashenka’s family) and 8 companies.
