Belarus Rejects ICAO Findings on Ryanair Flight's Grounding

MINSK0 (Sputnik) - The head of the Belarusian civil air authority rejected on Wednesday the findings of the UN civil aviation agency ICAO’s investigation into the 2021 grounding of a Ryanair passenger jet in Minsk.

The International Civil Aviation Organization said in a report on Tuesday that the flight crew was alerted to a fake bomb threat at the order of senior Belarusian government officials.

"This report does not hold water. We categorically rejected it," Artyom Sikorsky, the head of the aviation department at the Belarusian transport ministry, told reporters.

The ICAO council concluded that the bomb warning was deliberately false and endangered the flight's safety. It will present the findings to the ICAO assembly of 193 UN member states in fall.

The council representative for Russia said that Moscow strongly objected to identifying Belarus as the source of the bomb threat.

On May 23, 2021, Belarus diverted the Ryanair plane flying from Athens to Vilnius to Minsk over a bomb threat that turned out to be false. Belarusian opposition activist Roman Pratasevich and his girlfriend were arrested when the plane landed.