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The person is Raman Pratasevich, a Belarusian opposition activist and journalist, who was immediately detained and taken in an unknown direction, despite the plane being forcibly landed after unconfirmed information about the alleged bombing was announced.
“I am very hopeful that Raman is at least alive,” said the Lithuanian.
She openly recounted everything that had happened since the beginning of the trip from Greece and the moment when all the people suddenly met at the Minsk airport, although they were not supposed to be here. Although he was unable to reveal all the details due to the ongoing investigation, the openly recounted episodes provide a good understanding of what was happening on the plane and how the Lukashenko regime was treating people, forcing not only R. Pratasevičius , but also her friend Sofia Sapega. .
Here is the story of a passenger on a Ryanair plane who did not want to be identified (uncorrected language):
Tired of the harsh quarantine, home and bad weather, we came up with the opportunity to try our luck and spent a week with our families and those of our friends on a catamaran in Greece. Our team consisted of 6 adults and three children: our 4.5-year-old preschooler and his 3.5-month-old brother and his friends’ 4-month-old daughter.
We flew from Vilnius to Athens on AirBaltic with a transfer in Riga. The trip was really very successful and significant: after sailing from the port of Athens, we visited several islands in the Cyclades archipelago, we sailed almost 300 nautical miles, which is not always done by teams without children. Traveling with babies who were not yet walking and did not eat solid foods was not very difficult either. After a great ride on the waves, we returned to Athens on Friday night, where we spent some time before the flight home.
Back from Athens to Vilnius on May 23, we had to return on a direct flight with RyanAir: that plane landed in Minsk that is now talked about all over the world. 10 a. M. We flew in from Athens, we had to land in Vilnius around 1 pm The flight itself was normal, only my 3 month old baby was sucking something together so I had to completely calm him down which is not typical for him.
Now I think the boy probably felt something. I was sitting next to the plane in the middle of the plane, with the baby in my arms and the oldest next to it, around the wings. Somewhere at 12:30 the old man tells me: “Mom, look out the window, how beautiful!” I started looking and after a few minutes the plane suddenly started to turn right. I was still thinking: how strange and angular those planes fly …
A few minutes later, the pilot announced that for technical or security reasons at Vilnius airport, we would be leaving Minsk… All the passengers began to look at each other strangely and ask if they understood the pilot’s words correctly. And the foreigners who didn’t speak English were confused at all.
The Arab, who was sitting next to me and my son, did not speak English, but suffered patiently with a firm old man, he turned to me when everyone started to look and said: “Problem? No problem? “I shrugged my shoulders and said in English,” I don’t know. “The flight attendants from the plane started running around the plane, telling everyone to sit down and prepare for landing, and some who asked what was going on here, they responded very vaguely.
The understanding, Western-looking man who was sitting in the same row behind the hall started to panic and asked the butlers not to leave Minsk, but the butlers repeatedly seated him and he had no fever. The dark-eyed boy’s hands were shaking violently, he was trapped behind his head, swaying nervously. His girlfriend apparently didn’t understand what was going on either.
The plane landed rather abruptly, slightly buffeted by air currents. For a few moments the situation began to look like a terrorist attack, I even warned the old man without fear of anything happening, but when I saw that no one was attacking, I realized that there could also be political or technical problems here. Minsk, Europe in North Korea.
We were greeted by a delegation of Belarusian firefighters, ambulances and officials. We really didn’t understand what was waiting for us like this … After some got off the plane, we had to strictly leave our carry-on luggage on the ground – dogs smelled them.
We parked on the plane bus for a long time, and at the airport, where all the inscriptions in Belarusian, English and Korean (if I’m not mistaken), were waiting for passengers at 3pm time-consuming preliminary inspection. I noticed the clothing of the border guards: an old-style dark green shirt and probably dark green pants that stretched out in wool, old-fashioned designer shoes.
As I understand it now, we were very lucky that my 3 month old was fussy. As we entered the airport, it was so crowded that even the tin soldiers let the family pass in front (although we sat in the middle of the plane and got off one of the last ones), passing all the other poor prisoners in rows. wait, a narrow tunnel without windows, something that wasn’t really thought about beforehand.
Shrunken borderline women and hard-nosed men took the documents from each passenger and, without showing them to the passenger, asked everyone in Russian (a language not all passengers on the plane understand) what the name of the passenger or their son was, the year of birth …
The answer is also needed in Russian. Strict officials passed people through scanning devices, grabbing everyone (including children and babies) from head to toe and roughly touching genitalia. Well, this is probably the normal procedure, only long forgotten, when flying between underdeveloped countries.
We stayed in the Minsk airport transit lounge until the evening, clearly not knowing if we could actually fly. I’ve already started thinking about the script if you need to sleep here with the kids and maybe not even for a day or two …
We learned information about what is happening on the Lithuanian portals. It seems they were only informed when the plane landed. My family and friends decided not to give too many details to relatives or the press in Lithuania, because it was obvious that all the media were being followed. Later, it seemed that some Belarusian operators began to block the portals, because only after activating any known news portal, it was shut down after a few seconds. The lounge had men’s, women’s and disabled toilets with, thank you, normally working sinks.
It’s good that there was still a baby developmental board in the ladies’ room and we were able to change diapers quite comfortably. My friend and I started interacting with each other for 6 months. a cute mother holding a child and counting how many diapers we have in our hand luggage together… After all, no one was going to give us checked luggage or trolleys. There he was “looking for a bomb.”
There was still a small buffet in the hallway, initially we bought only sandwiches and drinks, and then a more normal menu with hot dishes appeared (potato pancakes etc). A grim-faced middle-aged waitress said that she had never seen so many people in that hallway. Just an incomplete, two rows of 3 seats on a Ryanair plane, I thought …
We weren’t starving, and a lot of people (maybe out of fear, or maybe because of the low prices) swept the alcohol from the bar. We had to ask intoxicated and difficult to talk people not to go to the bathrooms to smoke, where there is little ventilation, because here with babies, children, pensioners and other people with different hair we have nothing to breathe, and we can stay in that room for a day or two. The limitations of the Covid19 pandemic have already been maintained somewhere beyond … I spent practically the entire time with a crying baby in my arms, and the old man kept repeating that he really wanted to go home to Vilnius.
During the day, some passengers managed to contact the embassy and the hope that we would fly away began to shine. People said that initially Western diplomats weren’t allowed to enter the airport, but then they managed to break through.
Around 7 pm He invited us to go through the door of the plane, which was missing several passengers flying to Minsk, including the guy sitting in our queue and his pretty girlfriends. It really puts a lot of pressure on my heart because of this, especially when I look closely at the atrocities that are happening to a crazy neighbor … Our traveling companion repeatedly said that he was facing the death penalty before leaving for Minsk.
When the plane landed in Vilnius around 9pm, people with tears in their eyes started clapping and shouting with joy that we had returned to the developed country again. We are now physically healthy, alive, safe, at home. It was a moving event when the plane landed in Vilnius: while the man was looking at the documents on the plane door so that we could go to the investigators, the Lithuanian prime minister rocked our baby when he asked for help.
After the wooden faces of the Belarusian officials, both our Prime Minister and the police officers, even on Sunday evening, looked at us and treated us as close and warm people.
Unfortunately, I cannot reveal any more details about the criminal incident because we are involved in a police investigation with the entire family. I am very hopeful that Raman is at least alive.
