The Belarusian minister answerable for illegally diverting a Ryanair flight to arrest opposition journalist Roman Protasevich has mysteriously died.
Aleksey Avramenko handed away immediately on July 4 aged 46, in line with state information company Belta, which cited data from the federal government.
The company didn’t report a reason for demise.
Avramenko was the nation’s Minister of Transport and Communications and was behind the illegal diversion of passenger flight FR4978 to Minsk airport on May 23, 2021, as it travelled from Athens, Greece, to Vilnius in Lithuania.
Opposition activist and journalist Protasevich and his then girlfriend Sofia Sapega have been arrested by authorities in a transfer that was extensively condemned within the West.
Aleksey Avramenko, the Belarusian minister answerable for illegally diverting a Ryanair flight to arrest opposition journalist Roman Protasevich, has mysteriously died
Avramenko was born in Minsk in 1977. He labored in street building and upkeep earlier than occurring to carry a number of positions within the transport ministry.
He turned deputy minister for transportation in 2013, after which first deputy minister in 2019, earlier than lastly assuming the ministry’s highest place in 2019.
This meant he was the nation’s transport minister in 2021 and straight reporting to Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko when FR4978 was diverted.
Protasevich ran a Telegram messaging app channel that was extensively utilized by contributors in mass protests in opposition to the disputed August 2020 election that gave authoritarian Lukashenko a sixth time period in workplace.
The channel, Nexta, is without doubt one of the most well-known opposition shops in Belarus. Along with its sister channel, Nexta Stay, it has 1.4million followers.
The protests, which lasted for months, have been the longest and largest demonstration of opposition to Mr Lukashenko since he took energy in 1994.
Belarusian authorities responded to the demonstrations with a brutal crackdown by which greater than 35,000 individuals have been arrested, 1000’s have been overwhelmed by police and dozens of media shops and non-governmental organisations have been shut.
Protasevich was dwelling in exile on the time, however he and his girlfriend have been arrested when their Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania was ordered to land in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
Belarusian authorities stated there was a bomb risk, however later stated no explosives have been discovered on board.
The incident brought about outrage in Western nations, with officers within the UK, EU and Nato condemning it as tantamount to hijacking.
Roman Protasevich being interviewed on Belarusian TV in June 2021 a month after Avramenko, the nation’s Minister of Transport and Communications, ordered the diversion of passenger flight FR4978 to Minsk airport
Belarusian police arrest Roman Protasevich in Minsk in March 2017
Protasevich went on to face trial on costs of organising unrest and plotting to grab energy. The court docket sentenced him to eight years in jail in Might 2022.
The founding father of the Nexta Telegram channel, Stsiapan Putsila, and one other editor of the channel, Yan Rudzik, have been sentenced in absentia to twenty and 19 years in jail respectively. Each stay in exile.
After the arrest, Protasevich went on Belarusian state television several times to confess, denounce the opposition and apologise to Mr Lukashenko – appearances that critics stated have been made beneath duress.
Each Protasevich and his girlfriend, Sapega, have been later launched from custody and put beneath home arrest.
In Might 2022, Sapega was convicted and sentenced to 6 years in jail.
Three days later, a message on a Telegram channel billed as belonging to Protasevich sought to distance him from Sapega – saying they’d separated lengthy earlier than and that he was married to another person.
It couldn’t be independently verified whether or not the submit was freely written by Protasevich or any of the claims it contained, or if it was obtained by way of coercion.
Sapega petitioned the Belarusian authorities to extradite her to her dwelling nation, Russia, to serve out the rest of her sentence. The Belarusian authorities agreed.
Belarus’s opposition chief in exile, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, referred to as the sentences handed on Protasevich, Putsila and Rudzik ‘disregard for justice’ on the a part of ‘the Belarus regime’, which had carried out ‘a faux trial’.
A sniffer canine checks flight FR4978 at Minsk airport on Might 23, 2021, after Belarusian authorities stated there was a bomb risk on the aircraft. No explosives have been discovered on board
Ms Tsikhanouskaya stated in a tweet that Protasevich has ‘been the regime’s hostage for the reason that Ryanair hijacking’.
In Might this 12 months, Protasevich introduced that he had obtained a presidential pardon, the Belarusian state information company reported on the time. ‘I actually simply signed all of the related paperwork that I used to be pardoned. This, after all, is simply nice information,’ he was quoted as saying by the Belta information company.
The human rights organisation Viasna says practically 1,500 individuals have been put behind bars in Belarus in reference to opposition actions.
That features Viasna’s founder, Ales Bialiatski, one of many 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureates. He was sentenced to ten years in prison in May.
