Belarus minister responsible for illegal Ryanair flight diversion dies mysteriously

The Belarusian minister responsible for illegally diverting a Ryanair flight to arrest opposition journalist Raman Pratasevich has mysteriously died.

Aleksey Avramenko passed away suddenly on July 4 aged 46, according to state news agency Belta, which cited information from the government.

The agency did not report a cause of death.

Avramenko was the country’s Minister of Transport and Communications, and in that position, he was behind the illegal diversion of passenger flight FR4978 to Minsk airport on May 23, 2021 as it travelled from Athens, Greece to Vilnius, Lithuania.

Opposition activist and journalist Protasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega were arrested by authorities in the move that was widely condemned in the West.

Avramenko was born in Minsk in 1977. He worked in road construction and maintenance, before going on to hold several positions in the Transport Ministry.

He became deputy minister for transportation in 2013, and then first deputy minister in 2019, before finally assuming the ministry’s highest position in 2019.

This meant he was the country’s transport minister in 2021 and directly reporting to Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko when the FR4978 incident happened.

Pratasevich ran a Telegram messaging app channel that was widely used by participants in mass protests against the disputed August 2020 election that gave authoritarian Lukashenko a sixth term in office, which he assumed in 1994.

The channel, Nexta, is one of the most well-known opposition outlets in Belarus.

Together with its sister channel, Nexta Live, it has 1.4 million followers.

The protests, which lasted for months, were the longest and largest demonstration of opposition to Mr Lukashenko since he took power in 1994.

Belarusian authorities responded to the demonstrations with a brutal crackdown that saw more than 35,000 people arrested, thousands beaten by police and dozens of media outlets and non-governmental organisations shut.

Pratasevich was living in exile at the time but he and his girlfriend were arrested, when their Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania was ordered to land in the capital of Belarus, Minsk. 

Belarusian authorities said there was a bomb threat but later said no explosives were found on board.

The incident elicited outrage in Western countries – including the UK, EU and NATO – with officials condemning it as tantamount to hijacking.

Avramenko was the country’s Minister of Transport and Communications, and in that position, he was behind the illegal diversion of passenger flight FR4978 to Minsk airport on May 23, 2021 as it travelled from Athens, Greece to Vilnius, Lithuania. Opposition activist and journalist Roman Protasevich (pictured, June 3, 2021) and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega were arrested by authorities in the move that was widely condemned in the West

Belarus police arrest journalist Raman Pratasevich, center, in Minsk, Belarus, March 26, 2017

Pratasevich went on to stand trial on charges of organising unrest and plotting to seize power. The court sentenced him to eight years in prison in May 2022.

The founder of the Nexta Telegram channel, Stsiapan Putsila, and another editor of the channel, Yan Rudzik, were sentenced in absentia to 20 and 19 years in prison respectfully. Both remain in exile.

After the arrest, Pratasevich went on Belarusian state television several times to confess, denounce the opposition and apologise to Mr Lukashenko – appearances that critics said were made under duress.

Both Pratasevich and his girlfriend, Sapega, were later released from custody and put under house arrest.

In May 2022, Sapega was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison.

Three days later, a message on a Telegram channel billed as belonging to Pratasevich sought to distance him from Sapega – saying they had separated long before and that he was married to someone else.

It could not be independently verified whether the post was freely written by Pratasevich or any of the claims it contained, or if it was obtained through coercion.

Sapega, in the meantime, petitioned Belarusian authorities to extradite her to her home country, Russia, to serve out the remainder of her sentence. The Belarusian government agreed. It was not immediately clear when that might happen.

Belarus’ opposition leader in exile, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, called the sentences to Pratasevich, Putsila and Rudzik ‘disregard for justice’ on the part of ‘the Belarus regime’, which conducted ‘a fake trial’.

Belarusian authorities said there was a bomb threat on the plane (pictured, May 23, 2021) but later said no explosives were found on board. The incident elicited outrage in Western countries with officials condemning it as tantamount to hijacking

Ms Tsikhanouskaya said in a tweet that Pratasevich has ‘been the regime’s hostage since the Ryanair (plane) hijacking’.

In May this year, Pratasevich announced that he had received a presidential pardon, the Belarusian state news agency reported at the time. ‘I literally just signed all the relevant documents that I was pardoned. This, of course, is just great news,’ Raman Pratasevich was quoted as saying by the news agency Belta.

Human rights organisation Viasna says nearly 1,500 people have been put behind bars in Belarus in connection with opposition activities.

That includes Viasna’s founder, Ales Bialiatski, one of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureates. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in May.