Prosecutors in the United States charged four Belarusian government officials with aviation piracy on Thursday for diverting a Ryanair flight last year to arrest an opposition journalist under the guise of a bomb threat.

The accusations, presented by federal prosecutors in New York, detailed how, on May 23, air traffic control authorities in Minsk, Belarus, diverted a routinely scheduled passenger airliner between Athens, Greece, and Vilnius, Lithuania, to Minsk.

"Since the birth of powered flight, countries throughout the world have worked cooperatively to ensure the safety of passenger airplanes. The defendants violated those standards by diverting an airplane for the inappropriate purpose of stifling dissent and free speech," United States Attorney Damian Williams said in a news release announcing the accusations.

According to Ryanair, Belarusian flight controllers informed the pilots of a bomb threat against the aircraft and directed them to land in Minsk. Belarusian military personnel scrambled a MiG-29 fighter jet in an apparent attempt to persuade the crew to follow flight controllers' instructions.

Raman Pratasevich, a jailed writer and activist, created a popular messaging app that assisted in organizing significant protests against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Pratasevich, 26, fled Belarus in 2019 after being charged with instigating violence.

In August, US President Joe Biden imposed further sanctions against Belarus on the first anniversary of Lukashenko's election to a sixth term as president of the Eastern European country – a vote that the US and international community deemed suspect.

The widespread opinion that the 2020 election was stolen sparked riots in Belarus, resulting in more significant harassment of protestors, dissidents, and independent media by Lukashenko's government. Over 35,000 individuals have been arrested, and others have been beaten and imprisoned. The protests lasted months, finally dying down as winter set in.

Leonid Mikalaevich Churo, director-general of the Belarusian state air navigation authority Belaeronavigatsia Republican Unitary Air Navigation Services Enterprise; Oleg Kazyuchits, deputy director-general of Belaeronavigatsia; and two Belarusian state security agents whose entire identities were unknown to prosecutors.

Prosecutors in the United States classified the defendants as fugitives and charged them with conspiring to commit airplane piracy, which carries a mandatory minimum term of 20 years in prison.

Requests for comment were made to the Belarusian embassy in Washington and its United Nations mission in New York; their phones rang unanswered Thursday evening.

Officials in the United States assert that they have jurisdiction in the case due to the presence of American people on board.

Following the incident last year, the European Union immediately prohibited Belarusian airlines from using the bloc's airspace and airports, urged EU-based carriers to avoid flying over Belarus, and sanctioned several Belarusian officials. The European Commission Ursula von der Leyen described the aviation event as a "hijacking." Lithuania has instructed all incoming flights to avoid neighboring Belarus, while Ukraine's leader has sought to prohibit Ukrainian flights across the neighbor's airspace.

However, Belarus' primary partner, Russia, gave support, noting that Belarus behaved per international bomb threat norms and that the West reacted hastily. Russian President Vladimir Putin invited Lukashenko to Moscow for discussions days after the incident. He nodded sympathetically as Lukashenko raged against EU sanctions, claiming the bloc attempted to destabilize his country.