THE State Security Committee (KGB) her Belarus included the 24-year-old Russian Sofia Sapega, convicted of “incitement to hatred”, on the list of people involved in terrorist activities. This is stated on the KGB website.

“A court decision has entered into force regarding her conviction for the crimes provided for in Article 1 of Law 130 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus,” the Belarusian KGB statement said.

At the same time, Sofia’s stepfather, Sergey Dudintz, told TASS that there is “no news” on the issue of Sapega’s possible transfer to the Russian Federation to serve her sentence.

24-year-old Sofia Sapega was arrested on May 23, 2021 in Minsk together with the co-founder of the NEXTA Telegram channel, Roman Protasevic, when the Ryanair airliner, which was operating the Athens-Vilnius flight, was forced to make an emergency landing at the Minsk airport after by a notification of its captain by Belarusian air traffic controllers that a bomb had been planted.

Immediately after his arrest, Protasevic began speaking to Belarusian state media, criticizing his former associates. He was subsequently released from pre-trial detention. On the other hand, the Belarusian court sentenced Sapega to six years in prison on charges of inciting social hatred, violence or threat of violence against internal affairs officers.

After Sapega’s arrest, the Belarusian pro-government Telegram channel “Zoltie Slivi” published a video of the girl’s “interrogation”, in which she allegedly “confessed” to running the “Black Book of Belarus” channel.

On May 6, 2022, the court sentenced Sapega to six years in prison for “inciting hatred.” In addition to “incitement to enmity”, the young Sapega is accused under six more articles of the Criminal Code. Among them is the illegal collection and dissemination of privacy-related information. On the basis of the other five articles, Sapega is prosecuted on the charge that she participated in their organization.

In June, Sapega asked President Alexander Lukashenko for a pardon. In the text of the request, she wrote that she committed the crime because of her young age and because of stupidity and asked to be allowed to be near her family, stressing that she was “fully aware of her illegal and unlawful” actions and that she “sincerely repents”.

However, in January 2023 it became known that Sofia Sapega was not pardoned.