Roman Protasevich has moved to house arrest

Roman Pro­ta­se­vich was tak­en into cus­tody on sus­pi­cion of incit­ing unrest after his dra­mat­ic cap­ture on 23 May.

His girl­friend, Russ­ian cit­i­zen Sofia Sape­ga, was arrest­ed with him and has also been moved to house arrest, her par­ents told BBC Russ­ian Ser­vice.

The EU respond­ed to the plane inci­dent with sanc­tions on Belarus.

Since their cap­ture, on a flight from Athens to Vil­nius, Mr Pro­ta­se­vich and Ms Sape­ga have been parad­ed on Belaru­sian TV, shown con­fess­ing to crim­i­nal activ­i­ty in record­ings which appeared to have been made under duress.

The jour­nal­ist faces charges that include organ­is­ing mass unrest and for which he could be sen­tenced to up to 15 years in prison, while Ms Sape­ga is also accused of caus­ing unrest.

West­ern coun­tries accuse Belarus of hijack­ing the Ryanair plane that was forced to land in Min­sk over a sup­posed bomb threat.

Where have they been moved?

Both had been held on remand since their arrest.

Ms Sape­ga is now liv­ing in a rent­ed flat in Min­sk, rel­a­tives told the BBC.

Her par­ents said the move had come as a sur­prise. «We’re in shock,» her step­fa­ther Sergei Dudich com­ment­ed.

Mr Dudich said the fam­i­ly hoped the charges against the young woman had been with­drawn but Dmit­ry Pro­ta­se­vich said the charges still stood against both his son and Ms Sape­ga.

«The lawyer says noth­ing, the author­i­ties say noth­ing,» Mr Pro­ta­se­vich’s father added. «If the form of deten­tion has changed it’s an improve­ment in their liv­ing con­di­tions. Oth­er­wise we don’t know what’s com­ing next.»

He added that he had found it dif­fi­cult to com­ment on the actions of the author­i­ties with regard to his son. «Maybe he’s been drawn into some polit­i­cal game?» he sug­gest­ed.