New York (AP) U.S. prosecutors have charged four Belarusian government officials with plane hijacking for hijacking a Ryanair flight last year to arrest an opposition journalist, using a ruse that there was a bomb alert. The charges in Manhattan federal court were announced Thursday by federal prosecutors.

US attorney Damian Williams said in a statement that the defendants had corrupted the standards followed by countries around the world to keep passenger planes safe. He said the indictment provides a quick and public explanation of what really happened to Flight 4978.

In August, President Joe Biden imposed sanctions on Belarus. At the time, the White House noted the forced landing of a European airliner crossing Belarusian airspace in order to arrest a prominent opposition journalist on board. The sanctions marked the first anniversary of the election of Alexander Lukashenko as president in an election that the United States and the international community said was riddled with irregularities.

Arrested journalist and activist Raman Pratasevich ran a popular messaging app that helped organize mass protests against Lukashenko. Pratasevich, 26, left Belarus in 2019 and was charged there with inciting riots. Ryanair said Belarusian flight controllers told the pilots there was a bomb threat against the airliner and ordered them to land in Minsk. The Belarusian military scrambled a MiG-29 fighter jet in an apparent attempt to encourage the crew to comply with orders from flight controllers. Lukashenko secured a sixth term as leader of the Eastern European nation last year. The widespread belief that the vote was stolen sparked mass protests in Belarus that led to an increased crackdown by Lukashenko’s regime against protesters, dissidents and independent media. More than 35,000 people were arrested and thousands were beaten and imprisoned.

Those charged in the court documents were identified as Leonid Mikalaevich Churo, director general of Belaeronavigatsia Republican Unitary Air Navigation Services Enterprise, the Belarusian state air navigation authority; Oleg Kazyuchits, Deputy General Director of Belaeronavigatsia; and two Belarusian state security agents whose full identities were not known to prosecutors. (AP) .

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