Sofia Sapega and Raman Pratasevich have been placed under house arrest, the Russian service of BBC News reports with reference to their families. The detainees are now being held in a rented apartment.
The news came as a surprise to Sofia’s parents.”We are in shock,” said her stepfather Sergei Dudich.
“It is hard for me to comment on the [Belarusian] authorities’ actions, I do not know what their goals are. They [arrestees] are still under the full control of the authorities, no one has dropped the charges against them. No information about Roma’s condition, his status has been given to us yet, it is nothing but mockery,” said Dzmitry Pratasevich, Raman’s father.
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, Russian citizen 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; a total of 166 persons and 15 entities are currently subject to restrictive measures.
belsat.eu
