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In his first public remarks since the Ryanair hijacking, Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko claimed warnings about a bomb on the passenger plane came from Switzerland.
Mr Lukashenko was speaking to a group of MPs and officials in Minsk, on Wednesday morning. He also said that the incident showed Europe was acting with his domestic enemies to destabilise Belarus.
“As we predicted, ill-wishers from outside and inside the country, have changed their methods of attacking us,” he said.
“They have crossed many red lines and crossed the boundaries of common sense and human morality.”
Previously, officials in Minsk claimed the bomb warning came from Palestinian group Hamas.
Mr Lukashenko, who has been in power for 27 years, said Belarus had become an “experimental shooting range” for the West, which intended to march eastward, on to Russia.
Opposition blogger Roman Protasevich was removed and arrested when the plane was diverted to the Belarus capital.
He and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, who was also arrested, have subsequently both appeared in videos since being detained, apparently both ‘confessing’ to crimes.
The fall out from Mr Lukashenko’s extraordinary intervention has propelled Belarus to the world’s front pages for the first time since mass protests last summer following an election which he is widely thought to have lost to the opposition candidate, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.
Europe has already responded in uncharacteristically swift fashion following the plane incident, announcing a new package of sanctions targeting Belarus’s state airline, state enterprises, and those in Mr Lukashenko inner circle.
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