Officially: A Letter about the "Bomb" Was Sent after the Ryanair Plane Turned to Minsk
- 27.05.2021, 15:30
A statement was made by the Swiss Internet provider Proton.
Proton Technologies AG, which owns the Protonmail.ch secure mail service, officially announced that the letter about the mining of the Ryanair liner was sent after the plane changed direction and flew to Minsk.
This will be reported by Reuters (translation - tass.ru).
The company complements:
“We see no reliable evidence that the statements of the Belarusian authorities are correct. We will support the European authorities in their investigations after receiving official inquiries.”
The Dossier Center claims that it, together with The Daily Beast and Der Spiegel, managed to obtain and analyze a copy of an email that Hamas sent to the Minsk airport. It follows from it that the Belarusian air traffic controllers informed the Ryanair pilots about the mining of the plane 27 minutes earlier than they received the message about the bomb.
The administration of Lithuanian Airports also received such a letter by e-mail. It happened on May 23 at 12:25 pm Belarusian time. The letter, sent from ahmed_yurlanov1988@protonmail.com, said: “We, the Hamas soldiers, demand that Israel ceases fire in the Gaza Strip. We demand that the EU renounces its support for Israel in this war. It is known that the participants of the Delphic Economic Forum are returning home on May 23 on flight FR4978. This plane has a bomb. If you do not fulfill our demands, the bomb will explode on May 23 over Vilnius. Allahu Akbar."
At 12:30, the plane entered the airspace of Belarus. As follows from the transcript of the dispatchers' negotiations with the Ryanair pilots, at the same moment, the Belarusian side informed the crew about the alleged explosion threat. At 12:33 pm, the dispatcher told the pilot that a letter with a message about the bomb had been sent to several airports at once. But, apparently, only Vilnius airport received it at that moment. The Greek Civil Aviation Authority said it had not received a bomb threat letter at the Athens airport.
At 12:47, the plane changed course and flew towards Minsk. The official statement of the Aviation Administration of the Ministry of Transport of Belarus does not say what time the e-mail arrived. But, according to the Dossier, a copy of the letter from the user Ahmed Yurlanov came to the e-mail of the National Airport of Minsk (info@airport.by) at 12:57 pm Belarusian time - that is, almost half an hour after the transmission of the message about the possible mining of the aircraft.