Lukashenko’s bogus ‘Hamas’ email
Newlines, in collaboration with the Dossier Center, has exclusively obtained the original bomb threat email Alexander Lukashenko now claims was sent by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, allegedly prompting his order to land a Ryanair jet carrying a dissident journalist in Minsk.
But timestamps show that the email was sent 24 minutes after Belarusian authorities told the pilot and crew that they were transporting an explosive device as well as passengers.
“Allahu Akbar” runs the subject line of the email, the sender of which was ahmed_yurlanov1988@protonmail.com. “We, Hamas soldiers,” the email continues, “demand that Israel cease fire in the Gaza Strip. We demand that the European Union abandon its support for Israel in this war. We know that the participants of [sic] Delphi Economic Forum are returning home on May 23 via flight FR4978. A bomb has been planted onto this aircraft. If you don’t meet our demands the bomb will explode on May 23 over Vilnius.”
Adding to the fact that the message was sent after the mid-air bomb theatrics unfolded, the sought-for cease fire referenced in the email had already taken effect on Friday, two days before this communique was sent out.
The bomb threat, Lukashenko insists, forced the Ryanair plane carrying one of Belarus’s most prominent opposition journalists to divert to Minsk Sunday at the added insistence of a MiG-29 fighter jet, which “escorted” the aircraft to an impromptu landing. Conveniently, it also gave Belarusian authorities a chance to snatch a reporter accused of galvanizing anti-government protests last year.
Roman Protasevich, the former editor-in-chief of the Telegram channel Nexta, is now in the custody of the KGB, as Belarus’s post-Soviet security service is still called, as is his Russian girlfriend Sofia Sepega. Both have “confessed” on camera to a slate of anti-government offenses in what were obviously coerced performances redolent of Stalinist show trials.
No one seriously buys the bomb threat claim, much less its attribution to Hamas, whose spokesman Fawzi Barhoum categorically rejected the group’s involvement in a 21st century plane hijacking—one that was more likely orchestrated by a government intent on quashing opposition from its own civilian citizens. [Continue reading…]
When the Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko plucked a dissident journalist out of the sky, he proved two things: that his 27-year grip on power is unhindered by international isolation, and that, absent meaningful action by the United States and Europe—whose citizens were among the passengers on the hijacked flight—nothing is going to change.
That, at least, is how Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya sees it. “Since December, we haven’t had any sanctions; we haven’t had any high-profile meetings,” the Belarusian opposition leader and self-styled leader of democratic Belarus told me from her office in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, where the Ryanair flight carrying the Belarusian opposition journalist Roman Protasevich was headed. Protasevich never made it to Vilnius, though, and neither did his girlfriend—both were detained after the flight was diverted to Minsk under the ruse that the Palestinian militant group Hamas had made a bomb threat (it had not). Tsikhanouskaya took the same flight only a week ago, and she told me she would have never imagined that something like that could happen. “Maybe I could be in Roman’s place,” she said.
That place is a Minsk detention center, where Protasevich appears to have been beaten and forced to confess to “organizing mass riots.” Tsikhanouskaya, meanwhile, remains in Vilnius, fighting the Belarusian prodemocracy movement’s corner on the world stage. Although her meetings with leaders and international bodies have reaped key wins—including widespread international refusal to recognize Lukashenko as the rightful leader of Belarus following last summer’s fraudulent presidential election, as well as U.S. and European sanctions against top Belarusian officials—they appear to have had little effect on the staying power of Europe’s last dictator. “The threat of sanctions stops [Lukashenko] from escalating violence,” Tsikhanouskaya told me during our Zoom call, “and that’s why very strong steps should be taken right now.” [Continue reading…]