Journalist grabbed in Belarus flight diversion goes on trial

MOSCOW (AP) — A Belarusian court has opened the trial of a dissident journalist whose May 2021 arrest after a forced diversion of his flight caused international outrage. Raman Pratasevich, editor of Nexta, a popular messaging app channel, was detained along with his girlfriend when their Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania was forced to land in the Belarusian capital Minsk because of a reported bomb threat. The U.S. and the European Union denounced the flight’s diversion as a hijacking and responded by introducing painful sanctions against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s government. Pratasevich’s channel was widely used by participants in mass protests in Belarus against Lukashenko’s reelection in August 2020, which the opposition denounced as rigged.