Belarus plane arrest - is it a first? By Claudia Allen media captionRoman Protasevich's father tells the BBC he is fearful his son may be tortured The forced diversion of a Ryanair passenger plane to Belarus's capital Minsk on Sunday, and the arrest of a dissident journalist on board, have caused outrage elsewhere in Europe. The civilian aircraft was flying from Greece to Lithuania, passing through Belarus's airspace, when Belarus sent a fighter jet to intercept it, claiming there was a bomb threat. The pilots of the Ryanair flight were obliged to follow the instructions of the military plane. The events have been condemned by the EU and the US. But has a similar intercept happened before?