The Moscow District Court of Brest sentenced Russian citizen Irina Vikkholm to one and a half years in prison, finding her guilty of slandering Lukashenka. This was announced on Monday, September 20, by the Belarusian TV channel Belsat.
The reason for the criminal case was Vikholm’s tweet published on May 23: after reposting an article by the BBC Russian service about the hijacking of Ryanair in Minsk, the Russian woman titled it “Another crime of Lukashenka: an act of state aviation piracy”, and the phrase “act of state aviation piracy” was borrowed from that part of the article, which spoke about the reaction of the Greek Foreign Ministry to the incident.
Очередное преступление Лукашенко: акт государственного авиапиратства https://t.co/afhlqWmMc2
— Irina Wickholm (@IrWi99) May 23, 2021
Five days after the appearance of this tweet, 58-year-old Irina Vikkholm was detained. She denied her guilt. Her further fate became known three months later, when on September 1 the prosecutor’s office of Belarus announced that a criminal case on “public libel” against Alexander Lukashenko by “foreign citizen V.” had been sent to the court. Investigators said that the Russian woman wanted to “damage the authority of the state.”
Ryanair forced landing situation
A Ryanair Boeing 737 aircraft flying from Athens to Vilnius urgently landed in Minsk on 23 May. The liner sat down after the message about the mining of the aircraft, which later turned out to be false. Two passengers were detained – opposition blogger Roman Protasevich and Russian woman Sofya Sapega. The EU Council later called on European air carriers to avoid flying over Belarus and imposed sanctions on the Lukashenka regime.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) conducted its own investigation into the incident. Its results and conclusions drawn from it are expected to be presented in November 2021.