The Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) plans a Jan. 31 meeting to consider its fact-finding report on a May 23, 2021, event in which a Ryanair Boeing 737-800 was forced to land in Minsk, Belarus, where authorities arrested a dissident journalist who has opposed Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.
ICAO said last week that it had released its fact-finding report to all 193 ICAO member states. The report says that ICAO investigators could not confirm the Belarus account of the incident, which insisted that the 737 was forced to land because of a bomb threat. The document calls the bomb threat, which had been relayed to the flight crew by air traffic control in Minsk, “deliberately false,” but it also says that investigators were unable to attribute the interference with the flight to any government or individual.
The ICAO Council also will review a request from Belarus involving what the Belarus government says were unlawful sanction…
