By a decision of the Warsaw District Court, Leanid Churo, the former director of “Belaeronavigatsia” Yauhen Tsyganou, the head of the control shift, and an unnamed high-ranking KGB officer were arrested in absentia in the case of the hijacking of the Ryanair plane in 2021, where Raman Pratasevich, the former editor-in-chief of the telegram channel “Nexta”, was flying.
The Polish State Prosecutor’s Office accuses these three Belarusian citizens of an “act of terrorism.”
As part of the investigation, they were charged with committing a crime under two articles of the Polish Criminal Code: “taking control of a Ryanair aircraft by deception” and “unlawful imprisonment of passengers and crew members.”
A 42-year-old dispatcher who fled to Poland with valuable evidence, including recordings from the flight control center made on his phone, helped to find out the circumstances of the plane landing. His name is Aleh Galegau.
According to the Polish investigation, on May 23, Churo brought a KGB officer to the control room, after which they gave deliberately false information about the bomb on board and demanded that the pilots land in Minsk.
On the afternoon of May 23, 2021, a Ryanair plane landed at Minsk National Airport. The flight was heading to Vilnius, however, as it turned out later, on the urgent recommendation of the Belarusian dispatchers, it landed in the capital of Belarus due to a message about a bomb on board. After a brief check, the ship headed along the same route, but Raman Pratasevich and his girlfriend Sofya Sapega were removed from the flight: the young people were detained by Belarusian security forces. The situation caused an international scandal and turned into many negative consequences for the country.
