Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko defends forced landing of Ryanair flight

MINSK: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has defended a decision to force the landing of a Ryanair passenger plane with a dissident journalist on board. The forced landing on Sunday has been sharply condemned by members of NATO as well as the UN Security Council, reports dpa news agency. "I acted lawfully by protecting people, according to all international rules," Lukashenko told Parliament in Minsk on Wednesday. Authorities used Sunday's landing to have dissident Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich arrested at the airport in Minsk. Protasevich is a "terrorist", added Lukashenko, who said the 26-year-old blogger was planning a "bloody uprising" in Belarus.

"There was a terrorist on board the plane," he said, claiming that it was his country's sovereign right to detain its own citizens.

Alexander Lukashenko initially said, without elaborating, that Belarus had received information that there was an explosive device on the plane. Therefore, he said, the plane, which was on its way to Lithuania from Greece, was diverted to Minsk with the assistance of a fighter jet. "That the plane was forced to land by a MiG-29 fighter jet is an absolute lie," said Lukashenko. Belarus acted for safety reasons, he said, because the plane flew over the country's nuclear power plant. The European Union has imposed new sanctions on the power apparatus in Belarus in the wake of the action, including a landing ban for the country's airlines and sanctions on the leadership. NATO condemned the action on Wednesday. The body's North Atlantic Council said the "unacceptable act seriously violated the norms governing civil aviation and endangered the lives of the passengers and crew". IANS

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