The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has released its fact finding report into the event involving Ryanair flight FR4978 in Belarus’ airspace.
The document was made accessible on January 17 to all 193 ICAO Member States, including the 36 States presently elected to the ICAO Council. It was compiled by a special Fact Finding Investigation Team composed of ICAO experts in the fields of aviation security, aircraft operations, air navigation, and international air law.
“The FR4978 fact finding report is based solely on the data and information countries have made available to ICAO, and includes operational details, technical analyses of the various measures and decisions undertaken, and references where applicable to the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation and applicable international legal instruments,” the statement reads.
Council representatives will formally consider any further actions to be taken by ICAO as a result of the report’s findings during a meeting scheduled for 31 January.
“I am grateful to ICAO for the report release and start of public work on the case. Last summer, my team appealed to the President of the ICAO Council, urging to conduct a thorough investigation into the plane’s hijack and arrest of Raman Pratasevich and Sofia Sapega. Since then, we have been in contact with the organisation’s leadership,” Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya said on Monday.
According to her, since the report does not name the perpetrators and is only the starting point in investigating the crime, the next step is the debate among the representatives of the ICAO Council based on its findings of the report.
“The regime’s actions convinced Belarusians that the law may be broken in a matter of seconds while restoring justice takes more time. But justice will be secured, and the first steps have already been taken,” Tsikhanouskaya’s Office stressed.
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. Apparently, the operation of forcibly landing the Ryanair airplane was 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.
Notably, 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. The former aviation specialist 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,” StanisławŻaryn, Spokesman for Poland’s Minister-Coordinator of Special Services, said then.
belsat.eu
