MINSK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th July, 2021) Former presidential candidate of Belarus, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, and Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary have met in Dublin to discuss the possibility of filing a lawsuit against the Belarusian government over the emergency landing of a Ryanair plane.
The meeting took place at the company's headquarters on Wednesday. The talks revolved around the Vilnius-bound Ryanair plane that landed in Minsk on May 23 over a bomb threat, which later turned out to have been false. During the stopover, Roman Protasevich, a co-founder of a Telegram channel designated in Belarus as extremist, was detained.
"Tikhanovskaya thanked CEO O'Leary for a principled stand and suggested he support filing an international claim against the Lukashenko regime over hijacking, which constituted an act of air terrorism," Tikhanovskaya's press office said on Thursday.
Ryanair is conducting its own investigation into the incident and is working with International Civil Aviation Organization, Poland, Lithuania, and Greece on gathering the data and evidence, the statement added.
The majority of Western countries does not recognize the outcome of the August 2020 presidential race in Belarus, in which incumbent Alexander Lukashenko secured a sixth term. The Belarusian opposition claims Tikhanovskaya, who fled to Lithuania after the election, is the real winner.
The Ryanair incident aggravated the tension between Belarus and the West, with the latter imposing a flurry of sanctions on the eastern European country.
