Swiss email provider says bomb threat cited by Belarus was sent after plane was diverted

• Proton Technologies AG said on Thursday that a message about a bomb threat that led to the forced landing of a Ryanair flight carrying a dissident journalist only came after the plane had been diverted
• Belarusian authorities said they ordered the airliner to land in Minsk because of a bomb threat from the Islamist militant group Hamas
• According to The Dossier Center, the email appeared to have been sent almost half an hour after the Belarusian authorities first warned the plane’s crew
• A publicly available timestamp also suggests the email address was created around May 14, roughly a week before the threat was made
• Hamas denied having any knowledge or connection to any bomb threat and European leaders have accused Belarus of state-sponsored piracy

Geneva-based email provider Proton Technologies AG said on Thursday that a message about a bomb threat that led to the forced landing of a Ryanair flight carrying a dissident journalist only came after the plane had been diverted.

Belarusian authorities said they ordered the airliner, which was in their airspace on its way from Greece to Lithuania, to land in Minsk because of a bomb threat from the Islamist militant group Hamas.

26-year-old journalist Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega were arrested immediately upon landing.

Hamas denied having any knowledge or connection to any bomb threat and European leaders have accused Belarus of state-sponsored piracy.

Proton declined to comment on specifics of the email, saying that its encryption made it impossible to “access or verify the contents of the message”.

“However, we are able to see when the message was sent, and we can confirm that the message in question was sent after the plane was redirected,” the Swiss company said in a statement.

On Wednesday, the London-based research group The Dossier Center published what it said was an email outlining the alleged Hamas threat from someone calling themselves Ahmed Yurlanov.

The email appeared to have been sent almost half an hour after the Belarusian authorities warned the plane’s crew there was a bomb threat.

A publicly available Unix timestamp connected to Yurlanov’s account also suggests that his email address was created around May 14, roughly a week before the threat was made.

Proton’s statement comes as Ireland’s transport minister said the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organisation had agreed to probe the forced grounding.

European leaders are also in the process of drawing up new sanctions against Belarus over Sunday’s incident.