The bomb threat aboard Flight FR4978 was deliberately false and was brought to the attention of the crew under the direction of senior Belarusian government officials. These conclusions were reached by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

They are contained in a report published on Wednesday, July 20, on the investigation of the incident related to the crash landing on May 23, 2021 in Minsk of a Ryanair plane, on board the opposition activists Roman Protasevich and Sofia Sapieha. ICAO also believes that Belarus grossly violated international law in this case. What the organization’s conclusions are based on and how they threaten Minsk – at DW.

ICAO blames Belarusian authorities for Ryanair incident

As noted in the ICAO statement, the current report includes new information and materials received following the initial review of the document by the ICAO Council in January 2022. Even so, it was established that the bomb threat aboard the Ryanair plane en route to Athens to Vilnius was false. However, at that time, ICAO had no reason to attribute responsibility for the incident to a specific person or state.

In that report, Belarus was accused only of violating procedural issues (non-compliance with some standard security procedures), as well as not providing all the information, which made it difficult to reach conclusions (Minsk claimed that the information was not preserved because it was excluded due to data storage rules).

In the July report, for its part, the ICAO directly condemns Belarus for committing an act of unlawful interference during a flight. The organization came to the conclusion that the information about the bomb on board the plane was false, the safety of passengers on Ryanair flight FR4978 was in jeopardy and, in addition, the information about the mining was brought to the attention of the crew in the direction of senior officials of Belarus.

Thus, according to the report, Minsk violated Article 1(1)(e) of the Montreal Convention on Air Transport, which makes it a crime to deliberately communicate false information that threatens the safety of an aircraft in flight. As well as article 4 of the Chicago Convention, which prohibits the use of civil aviation by any state for any purpose inconsistent with the objectives of the convention.

The ICAO statement also states that the conclusions of the report on the incident with Ryanair flight FR4978 will be provided to all member states of the organization, they will also be informed about the violation of the Chicago Convention by Belarus. In addition, the ICAO Council will submit a report to the UN Secretary-General “for consideration and any appropriate action”.

Minsk airport dispatcher was “requested” by a KGB officer

The main thing that the new report contains and on which ICAO bases its conclusions on the involvement of the Belarusian authorities in the deliberate disembarkation of the ship is the testimony of the dispatcher from Minsk airport and the audio recordings made on his phone. His words, as stated in the report, “significantly contradict the information and materials provided by the Belarusian authorities on the events of May 23, 2021, including in relation to the email message as a source of information about the bomb threat, and indicate the involvement of an unidentified person.”

Ryanair plane was forced to change course and make an emergency landing in Minsk

Previously, the media reported that the name of this dispatcher is Oleg Galegov, during the migration crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border, he managed to leave Belarus and handed over the information he had about the incident to ICAO. Among them is an augmented recording of the plane’s conversations with the control room. As a result, next to the dispatcher was an unidentified person, who, according to the dispatcher, was a KGB officer. This person, judging by the recording, repeatedly asked the dispatcher what to respond to the captain of the aircraft, while several times consulting another person over the phone.

For example, an alleged KGB officer tells the dispatcher to inform the ship’s captain that a message about his mining has been sent to several airports. And also inform the crew that the threat code is “red”. As soon as the captain replied that he had decided to land the plane at Minsk airport, an unidentified person left the control room.

The second entry, as noted in the report, was made on June 1, that is, a week after the plane’s emergency landing. In it, the deputy general director of Belaeronavigatsia and the managers on duty are discussing with the dispatcher the introduction of adjustments to the readings “for a more detailed link to radio traffic”. According to the transcript, the deputy director general says the transcript should be written closer to radio traffic so it has “less fantasies”.

Can Belarus be excluded from ICAO?

Speaking about the consequences that Minsk may face after the publication of the report, Alexander Lanetsky, aviation expert and director of the Lithuanian air travel consultancy Friendly Avia Support, points out the deplorable situation in which Belarus already finds itself (following the Ryanair, only a few foreign airlines fly to Belarus and Belarusian aircraft are banned from flying to the EU. Ed.).

“It is unlikely to get any worse. In Belarus, hardly anyone flies anyway, and Russia and China are unlikely to stop. I don’t see any special consequences for the country. Perhaps the UN, after considering the ICAO report, will propose new sanctions, but I have little faith in them given the position of Russia and China – any UN Security Council-level sanctions will be blocked by them. Lanetsky.

Elmar Gimulla

German aeronautical law expert Elmar Giemulla, for his part, notes that ICAO does not have the power to take punitive measures, but can, for example, expel Belarus from the organization or suspend its voting rights in the ICAO Assembly. “It is not clear what effect these measures will have, but I think they are necessary simply to send a signal to the world community: what happened is illegal,” added Gimulla. At the same time, he highlighted that the exclusion of a State from the ICAO cannot be the organization’s objective and may even harm it.

As for the responsibility of those involved in the incident (the report mentions four suspects in the US investigation), Gimulla has no doubt that Belarus will not take any investigative action against them and will not extradite them. “Yes, the perpetrators can go unpunished. But they will no longer be able to leave their country, because they will be immediately arrested abroad. Although this probably does not apply to states with which Belarus is on good terms,” ​​the German expert concluded.