Girlfriend of detained Belarusian journalist ‘confesses’ in video, opposition cries foul

The girlfriend of a Belarusian blogger detained with him on Sunday after a aircraft they have been travelling on was pressured to land in Belarus appeared in a video on Tuesday night during which she made a confession that the opposition mentioned seemed pressured.
Speaking quick and searching uncomfortable, Sofia Sapega, a Russian citizen and the girlfriend of blogger Roman Protasevich, mentioned within the video that she was an editor of a Telegram messaging app channel that had publicised the non-public information of Belarusian regulation enforcement personnel, a criminal offense in Belarus.
A Ryanair passenger jet carrying Protasevich, a journalist important of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, and Sapega was pressured to land in Belarus on Sunday on account of a bomb hoax in an act denounced by Western powers as “state piracy”.

The Russian overseas ministry mentioned in an announcement that Sapega, a 23-year-old scholar, might face prison expenses beneath a number of articles of the Belarusian prison code.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the chief of the Belarusian opposition who operates from close by Lithuania, mentioned on Twitter that Sapega seemed to be beneath psychological stress. Franak Viacorka, an adviser to Tsikhanouskaya, mentioned on Twitter that Sapega’s confession appeared to have been made beneath duress.
“She is guilty of being a friend of Roman. And they forced her to confess to ‘crimes’ she did not commit,” he wrote.
Belarusian authorities will hold Sapega in a pre-trial detention facility for 2 months, the TASS information company reported, citing her father, Sergey Dudich.
Sapega’s mom, Anna Dudich, mentioned in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday that her daughter was harmless and easily within the mistaken place on the mistaken time. Sapega felt fantastic and had not complained of inappropriate remedy, the RIA information company reported, citing Russia’s embassy to Belarus.
Sapega is a scholar at a college within the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. She was flying there on Sunday with Protasevich after their vacation in Greece to defend her grasp’s thesis forward of commencement, in keeping with the college.