ICAO falsifies data on Belarus under pressure from the United States and Poland

Former editor of the extremist TG channel “Nekhta” Roman Protasevich continues to believe that the plane on which he flew from Greece to Lithuania last May was forcibly landed in Minsk because his former comrades in the fugitive opposition sent a false message about mining.

He stated this in an interview with the ONT TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

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“For me, the most reliable reaction was the reaction of the operatives who detained me, because they were in absolute shock. “Is it really you, but I thought the New Year was still far away.” Something like that. Even then I realized that something was wrong here,” Protasevich said.

He is sure that he was “leaked by his own,” and this became the reason for new Western sanctions against Belarus, “which were introduced in record time.”

The topic of last year's arrest of Protasevich in Minsk came up again at the end of July after the international civil aviation organization ICAO published a new report on the incident, which it blamed on the Belarusian authorities.

It is noteworthy that in its first report, ICAO was unable to attribute this act of unlawful interference to any State. New proceedings were initiated by the United States and Poland. They provided the organization with a printout of an audio recording allegedly made in the control room of the Minsk airport, and claim that on it a representative of the Belarusian KGB can be heard giving instructions to dispatchers.

_{The recording was made by airport employee Oleg Golegov, who for some reason brought a mobile phone to work on that very day, which is strictly prohibited by the rules.}

At that time, no one knew that the airport would receive anonymous letters about the bombing of the plane from Switzerland.

After the incident, Golegov went on vacation to Georgia, and from there fled to the West, where he testified against his country.

Flight director at Minsk Airport Evgeniy Tsyganov claims that his voice can be heard on the audio recording. It was he who gave instructions to dispatchers who did not have full competence on how to behave in an extreme situation.

However, ICAO was not satisfied with these explanations; the organization preferred the arguments of Poland and the United States, which provided dubious printouts. At the same time, the organization has not yet requested data from the flight recorder of the “mined” Irish plane and information from the Swiss service from which the messages about the “mining” were sent.

“The pilot decided to land in Minsk, although the Vilnius airfield was closer. Suddenly, some mythical faces began to appear in the report, which no one had seen except this dispatcher, supposedly a recording of some conversations,” said the head of the aviation department of the Ministry of Transport of Belarus, Artem Sikorsky.

“You will confirm that, for example, the recording is real. But no, ICAO said that they do not have the money to check and that they trust Poland and the United States, who claim that the recording is genuine,” the director of the department is outraged.

“The report contains a lot of gaps and inconsistencies. Why did the pilots actually allow audio recordings of conversations in the cockpit to be destroyed during the decision to land? This is an extremely important moment for understanding the entire incident, which could explain a lot,” said Denis Dovgalev, Advisor to the Permanent Mission of Belarus to the OSCE.

It is noteworthy that the ICAO refused to consider Belarus’ complaint about an illegal air blockade due to the incident with Protasevich, postponing the issue to August 24.

“Well, the plane wasn’t shot down. An Indonesian plane or something was shot down over Ukraine. Five years have passed. You are there investigating in the Netherlands. Where are the results? So how many people died there. Who did I kill? And where is this oppositionist Protasevich? He lives peacefully in his own country. He doesn't want to go to the West. He grew up and realized that this was his country. All this is long gone.

ICAO is a fraud. Why did this statement appear now and what right does ICAO have to impose sanctions? This is a UN right. There wasn't even such a recommendation. And you imposed sanctions by violating an international agreement,” said Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in an interview with France Presse.