MINSK. Aug 30 (Interfax) - Experts from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) have refused to speak to Roman Protasevich, former editor of the Telegram-channel Nexta designated extremist in Belarus, who was arrested in May after his Ryanair flight was forced to land in Minsk.
"They refused to speak to him, they had been offered to. Initially, in terms of their stay here it was noted that they wanted to speak to the five passengers who remained in Belarus. In the end they met with none of them," the aviation department's director Artyom Sikorsky said live on "Glavny.Tur" on Saturday.
"Their opinion has changed, because they arrived here with a totally different mood from when they left," he said.
"With a greater understanding of what happened here. And that there was not any special operation carried out here to stop some passenger, absolutely not. And the main thing is that they saw this. Because we did not know at all who was flying over our airspace, as in the [case of] most planes that fly. And the main thing is that we proved this," Sikorsky said.
Furthermore, Belarus proved that it acted strictly in accordance with all international instructions, he said. "And in the end, I saw that they were absolutely lost, because the mood with which they came was now changed," Sikorsky said.
The ICAO team probing the Ryanair landing at Minsk's national airport arrived in Belarus on August 23. The visit's results will be reflected in a preliminary report due in September. The final report will be submitted by November.
In late May-early June the European Union and several other countries closed their airspaces for Belarusian air carriers. European airlines refused to fly over Belarus.
The sanctions followed an incident involving a Ryanair flight on May 23 from Athens to Vilnius. The plane was forced to land in Minsk because of a bomb alert, which proved false. Protasevich and his Russian girlfriend Sofia Sapega were among the passengers. Both were detained by Belarusian authorities after the airliner landed.