The captain and crew of the Ryanair passenger jet “hijacked” by the Belarus regime were pressured to confess on camera that they voluntarily diverted to Minsk, the airline’s boss Michael O’Leary has revealed.
Mr O’Leary said that after the plane was intercepted and forced to land in the Belarus capital Minsk following a fictitious bomb threat, a number of unidentified people boarded the aircraft carrying video cameras.
He told MPs on the transport committee that they “repeatedly attempted to get the crew to confirm on video that they had voluntarily diverted to Minsk” but they “refused to confirm that”.
The diversion of the jet en route to Vilnius in Lithuania resulted in passengers Roman Protasevich, the opposition journalist, and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega being seized by the Belarusian authorities.
They have since appeared giving televised “confessions” that supporters fear were extracted under duress.
Describing it as a “premeditated breach of international aviation rules” by Belarus, Mr O’Leary said that after landing the passengers and crew were taken to a terminal building under armed guard and held “for a number of hours”.
He said: “The captain was left on board, but every time he left the cockpit to examine either the engines or do a walk around, he was accompanied by an armed guard. So it was a very threatening and hostile environment. We eventually got the aircraft back out of Minsk after about eight hours.”
The plane left Belarus without five passengers: the journalist along with two Belarusian citizens and a Greek computer scientist.
Mr O’Leary suggested the extra three could be agents from Russian or Belarus KGB but each said they had asked to disembark as they were transiting to Minsk anyway in interviews on Belarusian TV.
Giving evidence to the Transport Select Committee on Tuesday, Mr O’Leary said the flight, FR4978 from Greece to Lithuania on May 23 carrying 132 passengers, was told by Minsk air traffic control to head for the capital’s airport escorted by a MiG fighter jet.
He said the crew were told by Minsk air traffic control (ATC) that they had received “a credible threat that if the aircraft entered Lithuanian air space, or attempted to land at Vilnius airport, that a bomb on board would be detonated”.
He explained that the captain “repeatedly” asked Minsk ATC to provide an open line of communication back to Ryanair’s operations control centre in Warsaw, but was told: “Ryanair weren’t answering the phone”, which was “completely untrue”.
Mr O’Leary said diverted Ryanair flights in that location would normally land in Poland and the other Baltic states, but the captain was put under “considerable pressure” to land in Minsk. “He wasn’t instructed to do so, but he wasn’t left with any great alternatives,” he said.
Michael O’Leary told the committee that he was not in favour of the ban on UK and EU airlines flying over Belarus, or Belarusian airline Belavia from operating in the UK or EU, remaining in the long term.
He said: “We cannot have a situation whereby airlines, air travel, our customers and our citizens run the risk of being hijacked and diverted under false pretences.
“But equally, far more UK citizens will be disrupted as a result of long haul flights between the UK and Asia for example now having to fly around Belarus or avoiding Belarusian airspace. This is not in our long-term interests as an industry or in our passengers’ best interests.
“We need to have an outcome where the European and the UK authorities, hopefully assisted by international partners, receive appropriate assurances from the Belarusian and/or Russian authorities that this will never happen again.”
