Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Belarus has earned the nickname of the “last dictatorship in Europe”. The country has certainly been living up to that nickname over the past year, fixing elections and locking up dissidents, some of whom – it is reported – are tortured while in detention. But on Sunday it took the outrageous step of forcing a Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius in Lithuania to land instead at its capital Minsk, claiming a “bomb threat”. Once the flight had landed, two of its passengers were detained by Belarusian security: one, Roman Protasevich, is a prominent dissident journalist and blogger who had been living in exile in Poland. The other, his Russian girlfriend Sofia Sapega, is a law student.

The manner of the detentions break a host of international and human rights laws. The EU has already issued sanctions against Belarus, including banning its flights from European airspace.