UN Civil Aviation Agency Calls Urgent Meeting to Discuss Belarus Act of Air Piracy

The UN civil aviation agency will hold an urgent meeting Thursday (27 May) to discuss Belarus after Western powers on the UN Security Council called for the body to investigate Minsk's diversion of a European flight and arrest of a dissident.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Council will meet as the consequences of the incident play out in Europe's airspace, with a Barcelona-bound flight from Minsk refused access to French airspace, and Poland banning Belarusian carriers on Wednesday.

The EU banned Belarusian planes from the bloc's airspace and urged EU airlines to avoid flying over the ex-Soviet country ruled by Alexander Lukashenko, often dubbed "Europe's last dictator".

But a defiant President Alexander Lukashenko said he had "acted lawfully to protect our people", in an address to parliament on Wednesday.

"Civil aviation rules were not written with the expectation that a state would behave like a terrorist," said Nathalie Younan, an aviation law specialist at the FTPA Avocats law firm in Paris.

A commercial airline pilot told AFP on condition of anonymity that there are detailed procedures to follow when a plane faces bomb warnings or is being intercepted by fighters.

But, the pilot said, "the scenario in which a state carries out an act of piracy is not among the scenarios".

For the Ryanair pilots, he said, "there was no doubt. … You don't take the responsibility of being shot down".

ICAO said the diversion "could be in contravention of the Chicago Convention".

Signed in 1944, the Chicago Convention established the ICAO, as well as the rules of airspace rights and air travel and security.

Article 1 of the treaty says that "every State has complete and exclusive...