The dictator of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, recently hijacked an international airline flight to kidnap a dissident. It was so clumsily transparent that it would be funny if the life of journalist Raman Pratasevich, now the prisoner of the KGB, weren’t in danger.

The civilized world, which is just about everywhere but Belarus, must unite against this act of state piracy, blocking flights to or from Belarus and steering international air traffic around the eastern European prison house.

Pratasevich was traveling on Ryanair Flight 4978 from Athens to Vilnius, in Lithuania, on Sunday, overflying Belarus. The trip is a little less than three hours, but shortly before the non-stop was due to arrive in Vilnius, it did a U-turn and landed in Minsk, escorted/forced down by a MiG-29 fighter jet. Pratasevich was grabbed and pulled off the plane, which then proceeded to Lithuania. Official excuse: “there was bomb threat.” We left out the article “a” to give it a sense of the original.

Pratasevich later showed up in a video from his jailers in which he said he is being treated well, even though his parents say it looks like his face is swollen and his nose is broken. Pratasevich must be released and allowed out of the country.

The old Soviet KGB was dissolved in December 1991, a few weeks before the whole USSR collapsed into 15 independent republics, including Belarus. In Russia, Putin’s less ominously named goons are the FSB. For Lukashenko in Belarus, it never stopped being the KGB.

Lukashenko won the first election in independent Belarus in 1994 and has “won” every five years since, including last year, when he called out the troops to make sure that he prevailed and to put down massive protests of his massive cheating.

Having perfected his hold on power, Lukashenko has been ruling longer than Pratasevich has been alive. Lukashenko’s reign should end and Pratasevich’s life must continue, in freedom.

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