Passenger of the Ryanair Flight
- Admin of the NAM
- Dec 1
- 3 min read
Legal qualification:
Article 2 (Episode 1) of the analysis: Violation of the Chicago Convention of 1944.
Violation of the Montreal Convention of 1971 (Act of unlawful interference).
Article 7(1)(e): Arbitrary deprivation of liberty (in relation to all passengers).
L.M., 35, a Lithuanian citizen, worked as a sales manager. On 23 May 2021, he was flying a regular Ryanair flight FR4978 from Athens to Vilnius. It was the end of his holiday: a week in Crete, sun, sea. On the plane, he was reading a book and dozing.
As the aircraft had already begun its descent, approaching Vilnius, the captain suddenly announced over the loudspeaker: “Attention, ladies and gentlemen. Due to a potential security threat on board, we are forced to make an emergency landing at the nearest airport. That is Minsk.”
L.M. looked out the window. Vilnius was very close. “Minsk? he thought. Why Minsk? That makes no sense.” Mild unease spread through the cabin.
“But the most surreal moment,” L.M. later recalled in an interview, “was when I looked out the window again. Right next to our wing, very close, was a military fighter jet. Grey, with red stars. A MiG-29. It was escorting us. I understood that this was not just a ‘security threat’. This was something else. This was a seizure.”
Panic overtook one of the passengers. A young man sitting a few rows ahead clutched his head. He was saying something to the girl next to him and feverishly handing her his laptop. That was Raman Pratasevich.
When the plane landed in Minsk, it was immediately surrounded by fire trucks and special forces. Belarusian security officers entered the cabin. “They were not looking for a bomb,” L.M. recalled. “They knew exactly who they had come for. They went straight to Raman and shouted: ‘Get up! Take your things!’. Then they took his girlfriend, Sofia, as well.”
The rest of the passengers — more than 120 people from different countries — were forced to leave the aircraft and were herded into the transit zone of the terminal. They were held there like hostages.
“It was a theatre of absurdity,” said L.M. “Airport staff with stone faces kept repeating: ‘Security screening in progress. Please wait’. They did not give us water. To go to the toilet, we were escorted by guards. We were EU citizens, on board a European carrier, flying between two EU capitals, yet we were entirely under the control of Belarusian security forces. It felt like total lawlessness.”
Their belongings were screened again and again. Dogs sniffed the luggage. But it was obvious it was all a performance. The real goal of the operation had already been achieved — Pratasevich was in KGB custody.
After eight hours of humiliating waiting, without any explanation, passengers were ordered to return to the plane. “When we boarded,” L.M. recalled, “we saw that Raman and Sofia were not there. Their belongings had simply been unloaded onto the runway. The cabin was dead silent. Everyone understood everything.”
The plane took off and landed in Vilnius 25 minutes later. When the wheels touched Lithuanian soil, a long applause broke out in the cabin. People cried with relief.
“I was flying back from vacation, and I ended up in a Hollywood Cold War thriller,” L.M. told journalists at Vilnius Airport. “They hijacked a civilian plane full of people, using a fighter jet. They endangered 120 lives. All of this — just to capture one person they didn’t like. This is not just a violation. This is an act of state terrorism. Today they hijacked a plane. What will they do tomorrow?”
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