Thread by @InsiderIntl

Meet Roman Protasevich, the 26-year-old journalist who was arrested by Belarusian authorities after grounding his Lithuanian-bound flight.

His dramatic arrest has drawn international interest this week.⬇️

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Protasevich and his girlfriend, Sophia Sapega, were aboard flight FR4978 from Athens to Lithuania before pilots were alerted of a bogus security threat and ordered to land in Minsk.

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Belarusian state media reported that it was President Alexander Lukashenko who gave an “unequivocal order” to ground the passenger jet in Minsk.

Protasevich has been a vocal critic of Lukashenko for a decade.

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Belarusian KGB agents took Protasevich into custody after the flight landed in Minsk, despite data on Flightradar24 showing the plane made a sharp U-turn to land in Belarus, as it was closer to its destination in Lithuania than Minsk.

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Protasevich grew up in Minsk where he first demonstrated his opposition to the Belarusian government in a 2011 video posted to YouTube.

At 16, he was among those detained by state authorities after sitting on a bench watching a “clapping protest.”

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Protasevich’s mother told @nytimes that, soon after, her son’s school expelled him.

He was homeschooled for six months because no other school would take him.

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He studied journalism at Belarusian State University but ran into legal trouble and was unable to finish his degree, @nytimes reported.

Protasevich was often detained and jailed as he worked for opposition-focused news outlets until his move to Poland.

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In Poland, Protasevich cofounded and serves as the editor-in-chief of Nexta, a news outlet based there, reporting on opposition efforts against Lukashenko for the next 10 months.

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In 2019, Protasevich moved back to Minsk until authorities arrested another opposition journalist Vladimir Chudentsov, prompting Protasevich and his parents to flee back to Poland.

He began organizing protests amid the controversial 2020 presidential election in Belarus.

In a government video following his arrest earlier this week, Protasevich confirmed his arrest. He said he was cooperating with authorities.

@nytimes reported his friends said he made the aforementioned confession under duress.

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Meanwhile, residents in Poland as well as Belarusians living in the country joined together to protest Protasevich’s arrest on Monday.

Protestors used paper airplanes as a visual prop to symbolize the aircraft being diverted to Minsk.

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