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The European Commission president has described the forced landing of a Ryanair flight in Belarus to detain an opposition activist on board as “utterly unacceptable”.
The Irish Government contacted Ryanair and EU authorities after one of the Irish airline’s planes was forced to land.
The Ryanair aircraft was ordered to land in Belarus over claims of a bomb threat that the country’s opposition politicians say was a ruse to arrest an activist on board.
The Irish airline’s scheduled flight from Athens in Greece to Vilnius in Lithuania was directed to land in the Belarusian capital Minsk over an alleged threat on board.
Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko ordered the plane that was flying over the country to land in Minsk. The Ryanair plane was forced to make an emergency landing and escorted to the airport by a fighter aircraft.
“ALL passengers must be able to continue their travel to Vilnius immediately and their safety ensured,” Ms von der Leyen said.
“Any violation of international air transport rules must bear consequences,” she said on Twitter.
Journalist, blogger and activist Roman Protasevich who ran an opposition social media Telegram channel called Nexta, was detained on arrival at the airport.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney said the reports of the Ryanair plane being forced to land to detain an opposition blogger were “extremely worrying.”
“We are in contact with the airline and EU colleagues,” he tweeted.
Ryanair has yet to make any public comment about the matter.
Protasevich faces the death penalty after he and the creator of Nexta, which exposed police brutality during anti-government protests last year in Belarus, were added to a list of individuals involved in terrorist activities in November.
Lukashenko, who has been in power in Belarus since 1994, has led a sustained crackdown against opponents of his government, including the media.
The political leader claimed victory in last year’s elections in Belarus, a result that was denounced internationally as false. The result was followed by street protests. About 35,000 people have been detained since August with dozens receiving jail terms.
Lithuanian president Gitanas Nauseda called on Belarus to release Portasevic, claiming that the Ryanair plan was directed to land “by force.”
“I call on Nato and EU allies to immediately react to the threat posed to international civil aviation by the Belarus regime,” he said.
“The international community must take immediate steps that this does not repeat.”
He promised to raise the issue with EU leaders at a summit on Monday.
Opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya tweeted that the Lukashenko regime had forced the Ryanair plane carrying the journalist and activist to land in Minsk.
Ms Tikhanovskaya said that the Belarusian authorities had “placed at risk” the safety of passengers on board “for the sake of [THE]punishment of the man who was an editor of Belarus’s largest independent Telegram channel.”
She called for his immediate release and an investigation by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, the UN agency, into the forced landing of the Ryanair aircraft.
A spokeswoman for the Lithuanian airport authority told the Reuters news agency that the plane, which had been scheduled to land in Vilnius at 11am Irish time, was diverted to Minsk due to a conflict between the crew and a passenger.
Fine Gael TD Neale Richmond, the party’s spokesman on European affairs, said that the diversion of the Ryanair flight was “a very worrying act by the dictatorship in Belarus involving an Irish owner-carrier.”