Three countries Ireland, Lithuania, and Greece are likely to file a complaint with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) regarding the incident of the arrest of a co-founder of a Poland-based Telegram channel that had a role the post-election protests in Belarus after his flight had to make an emergency landing in Minsk, Pierre d'Argent, an international law professor at the UCLouvain university in Belgium, told Sputnik
BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th May, 2021) Three countries Ireland, Lithuania, and Greece are likely to file a complaint with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) regarding the incident of the arrest of a co-founder of a Poland-based Telegram channel that had a role the post-election protests in Belarus after his flight had to make an emergency landing in Minsk, Pierre d'Argent, an international law professor at the UCLouvain university in Belgium, told Sputnik.
On Sunday, a flight by the Irish airline Ryanair from Athens to Vilnius was grounded in Minsk over a bomb threat which later turned out to have been false. Among the passengers was Roman Protasevich, one of the founders of the Telegram channel Nexta, who was detained by the country's law enforcement during the stopover. His 23-old female companion, Russian citizen Sofia Sapega, was reportedly detained alongside him. The incident caused an international uproar with some calling for ICAO to intervene.
"A complaint will certainly be lodged by Ireland (it was a Ryanair flight), by Lithuania, the country of destination and even by Greece, the country of departure of the flight," d'Argent said, adding that ICAO will investigate the complaint and likely condemn Minsk, which can try to overturn the agency's decision at the International Court of Justice.
The expert has also not ruled out the European Union imposing new sanctions on the country's officials, but questioned their effectiveness. This opinion has been echoed by his UCLouvain colleagues.
"Do not expect very severe sanctions from Europe. The EU has chosen the approach of graduated, progressive responses, which gradually hamper the power in place in Minsk. It is therefore likely that the sanctions to be decided on this evening will again be limited to personal sanctions on a series of Belarusian decision-makers in the entourage of President [Alexander] Lukashenko and his government," Pierre Vercauteren, a UCLouvain professor of political science, told Sputnik.
According to UCLouvain political science professor Michel Liegeois, for EU sanctions to have any real impact they have to target the country's economy, which risks "punishing oneself for the countries concerned."
Protasevich's Nexta is designated as extremist by Minsk for allegedly facilitating civil unrest in the country in the aftermath of the August presidential election.
In November, the Belarusian Investigative Committee filed a request with the Polish Justice Ministry through the Belarusian Prosecutor General's Office to extradite Protasevich and another Nexta co-founder, Stepan Putilo, to Belarus for criminal prosecution for their Telegram channel's role in those events. In February, Warsaw said it was reviewing the request.
