“The Swiss authorities have no knowledge of a bomb threat on the Ryanair Athens-Vilnius flight,” a ministry spokesman said in a short statement on Wednesday.
“Therefore, there have been no announcements from the Swiss authorities to the Belarusian authorities on this matter.”
Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko told his parliament in Minsk on Wednesday that a bomb threat which led to the aircraft’s grounding had come from Switzerland. He did not elaborate further.
On Sunday, Belarusian authorities scrambled a fighter jet and flagged what turned out to be a false alert to force a Ryanair plane to interrupt its course between Athens and Vilnius to land in Minsk.
Two people on board, the opposition activist Roman Protasevich and his partner Sofia Sapega, were arrested.
The 26-year-old journalist Protasevich previously worked for Poland-based online news service NEXTA, which broadcast footage of mass protests against Lukashenko last year via the Telegram messenger app, at a time when it was hard for foreign media to do so.
Protasevich, who now works for a different Telegram channel, is wanted in Belarus on extremism charges and stands accused of organising mass riots and of inciting social hatred, allegations he denies.
A government spokesman in Bern reiterated on Wednesday that Switzerland “firmly condemns” the action taken by Belarus, and said an international inquiry was needed to clarify the incident.
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