Comment on Ryan Air & Belarus by Mark Birkett

DEAR ALL,

Frightening as it might have been, I think the Captain and First Officer should have refused point-blank to co-operate with the Belarus Airport police when they started offloading this innocent passenger. By the time they landed, the Ryanair crew knew that this bomb threat was a hoax. They also knew by then that Mr Protasevich was the intended target of this criminal hijacking. Therefore the flight crew had an absolute moral and legal duty of care here. At the absolute least, they should not have taken off again without him safely back onboard. Had the Ryanair crew refused to co-operate, this would have forced Lukashenko to back down. Not even he would have had the temerity to jail an entire international airline crew.

There is precedent for such a brave but necessary flight crew response. Back in 1986, there was an attempted hijack of a Pan Am 747 on the ground in Karachi. And it failed because the flight crew all realised what was happening and bailed out of the aircraft's emergency hatch in order to stop the hijack from going airborne. Ryanair's crew should have done the same. The Captain has an absolute responsibility to look after the safety of all his / her passengers - and from start to finish of the planned journey.

If this Lukashenko bastard can get away with this outrage, NO-ONE is safe. The Saudi regime have done similar when they killed the Washington Post journalist Jamal Kashoggi. The Rwandan government did the same when they abducted Paul Rusesabagina (of 'Hotel Rwanda' fame) and flew him to Kigali. And Putin got away with poisoning several people on British soil.

It's not often I'd venerate Margaret Thatcher. But I tell you this, she would not have put up with this sort of behaviour from a criminal gang without a significant military response. We have to learn to stop these bullies in language they understand. Closing their western bank accounts for half an hour - which is all our useless governments ever seem to threaten these days - is absolutely worthless.

Mark Birkett

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