> The change of course occurred six miles from the Lithuanian border, when the pilot asked what the threat level was and was told it was "Red Alert" which apparently gives the pilot no option but to comply and land.
> Normally a flight diversion would be to Poland or the Baltic States but Belarus Air Traffic Control gave them no other options.
> Two of the passengers were removed in what was apparently "clearly" against their will. One of the three alleged security personnel who hijacked the plane and also remained in Minsk was apparently a Greek passenger, whatever that means.
It is a bit confusing about what role the supposed security personnel had in this. Wasn't it flight control flexing authority and feeding the crew bullshit about a terror threat that made them change course?
From the article it only seems that the 3 shady operatives probably were there just to confirm that the guy was indeed onboard, and possibly also to proceed with other instructions in some unforeseen circumstances, for example, if he suddenly tried to destroy his electronic devices, or if the ruse failed and the plane proceeded to Lithuania.
He started and moderated Telegram channels that opposition uses to coordinate protests against the government. The information they mostly want from him is about the foreign involvement in protests, most likely Polish Intelligence Agency.
Also all information regarding all people even remotely involved in the channel. All information shared on the channel, including administrative access.
All information about opposition activities discussed in the channel.
Also all his own personal communications that may or may not be political.
There is a slight difference between what the US did and what Belarsus did, but only in terms of the precise methods and such, the effective goal was the same.
Yes, that's the point, the means were very different, and not even legally dubious in the former case.
Morales' plane was, in the end, "forced down" by physics alone - a bunch of US allied countries have been convinced to be assholes and refuse that plane access to their airspace, which they have a right to do as sovereign states. These countries happened to be on the plane's course, and considering the plane and distance involved, it was impossible to take a detour, at least not without a complex operation of organizing stopovers and refueling, certainly can't just pause a plane mid air. So the plane had no choice but to land somewhere nearby, and once it was landed, being on the territory of a certain state, that state decided to search it, as they kinda do have a right to with something landed on their airfield.
On the contrary, the Belarus case is legally questionable on one layer, and a case of state (not merely sponsored, but performed directly by its institutions and personnel ) terrorism on another layer.
Lets start with the questionable. Belarus technically can force a plane in its airspace to land in it. However, legally that's very complicated. There are some clear cases in which they can do that, and a lot of this stuff is governed by international agreements like the Chicago Convention, which Belarus has ratified. Most of that is explained here better than i could do it for those interested.
www.enotrans.org
Besides that, i'm not sure what the rules are on forcing a landing of no-stop overflying passenger planes containing people who the state in question considers criminals in order to arrest them, but even then, the notable thing is that Belarus didn't do that, and didn't even claim it did that. One relevant thing i do know though is that onboard an airplane in flight, the laws of the state in which the plane is registered apply, rather than the law of the country below it (that changes when the plane lands). Belarus has also legally authorized the overflight. And that's of course because openly stating out that they want the plane down because a criminal accused of (political) offenses against the state of Belarus is onboard and they want to arrest him would be terrible diplomatic PR for Belarusian government, and would also raise complex issues under various international bodies and conventions that would not look good for Belarus. But they would not be getting accused of terrorism if they did that, so there's also the question of which would be worse.
And now to the unquestionably illegal. Belarusian services of this or that kind have crafted a probably false threat of terror bombing, and then Belarusian air traffic control (which in most cases an aircrew has a duty to obey, according to international conventions, including the ones i've mentioned earlier) communicated it to the aircrew in order to get it to divert to Minsk, while falsely claiming that the plane operator's management was unavailable for consultation (probably because the operator may have ordered the plane to divert to very close Polish border, or to ignore the fake bomb threat with suspicious conditionality and no independent confirmation). The threat was specifically crafted to state that continuing to Lithuania or landing in it would cause the bomb to explode.
As false bombing threats are still terrorist threats, and terrorist threats are also a form of terrorism, Belarus is guilty of that with no excuses available.
And that's really fucking bad. Its a less severe form of the same thing that got Operation El Dorado Canyon launched against Libya in 1986.
