(Bloomberg) -- Federal prosecutors in New York charged four Belarus government officials with airline piracy over the diversion of a Ryanair flight last year that resulted in the arrest of a dissident.

The flight was destined for Vilnius, Lithuania, but was diverted to Minsk while in Belarus airspace. Belarusian authorities claimed the diversion was due to a bomb threat. 

In reality, they were seeking to detain an exiled dissident journalist the Belarusian government had accused of “fomenting ‘mass unrest,’” according to a copy of the indictment unsealed Thursday.

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