The Belarusian minister responsible for illegally diverting a Ryanair flight to arrest opposition journalist Roman Protasevich has mysteriously died.
Aleksey Avramenko passed away suddenly on July 4 aged 46, according to state news agency Belta, which cited information from the government.
The agency did not report a cause of death.
Avramenko was the country's Minister of Transport and Communications and was behind
Opposition activist and journalist Protasevich and his then girlfriend Sofia Sapega were arrested by authorities in a move that was widely condemned in the West.
Aleksey Avramenko, the Belarusian minister responsible for athens transport illegally diverting a Ryanair flight to arrest opposition journalist Roman Protasevich, has mysteriously died
Avramenko was born in Minsk in 1977.

He worked in road construction and maintenance before going on to hold several positions in the transport ministry.
He became deputy minister for transportation in 2013, athens transport and then first deputy minister in 2019, before finally assuming the ministry's highest position in 2019.
This meant he was the country's athens transport minister in 2021 and directly reporting to Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko when FR4978 was diverted.
Protasevich ran a Telegram messaging app channel that was widely used by participants in mass protests against the disputed August 2020 election that gave authoritarian Lukashenko a sixth term in office.
The channel, Nexta, is one of the most well known opposition outlets in Belarus.

Together with its sister channel, Nexta Live, it has 1.4million followers.
The protests, Transport In Greece which lasted for months, were the longest and largest demonstration of opposition to Mr Lukashenko since he took power in 1994.
Belarusian authorities responded to the demonstrations with a brutal crackdown in which more than 35,000 people were arrested, thousands were beaten by police and dozens of media outlets and non-governmental organisations were shut.
Protasevich was living in exile at the time, but he and his girlfriend were arrested when their Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania was ordered to land in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. 
Belarusian authorities said there was a bomb threat, best private tours in athens greece but later said no explosives were found on board.
The incident caused outrage in Western countries, with officials in the UK, athens transport EU and Greece Transports Nato condemning it as tantamount to hijacking.
Roman Protasevich being interviewed on Belarusian TV in June 2021 a month after Avramenko, the country's Minister of Transport and Communications, ordered the diversion of passenger flight FR4978 to Minsk airport
Belarusian police arrest Roman Protasevich in Minsk in March 2017
Protasevich went on to stand trial on charges of organising unrest and plotting to seize power. The court sentenced him to eight years in prison in May 2022.
The founder of the Nexta Telegram channel, best private tours in athens greece Stsiapan Putsila, and another editor of the channel, Yan Rudzik, were sentenced in absentia to 20 and 19 years in prison respectively.

Both remain in exile.
After the arrest, , denounce the opposition and apologise to Mr Lukashenko - appearances that critics said were made under duress.
Both Protasevich and his girlfriend, Transport In Greece Sapega, were later released from custody and put under house arrest.
In May 2022, Getting around in Greece Sapega was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison.
Three days later, a message on a Telegram channel billed as belonging to Protasevich sought to distance him from Sapega - saying they had separated long before and athens transport that he was married to someone else.
It could not be independently verified whether the post was freely written by Protasevich or any of the claims it contained, or if it was obtained through coercion.
Sapega petitioned the Belarusian authorities to extradite her to her home country, Russia, to serve out the remainder of her sentence.

The Belarusian government agreed.
Belarus's opposition leader in exile, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, called the sentences passed on Protasevich, Putsila and Rudzik 'disregard for justice' on the part of 'the Belarus regime', which had conducted 'a fake trial'.
A sniffer dog checks flight FR4978 at Minsk airport on May 23, 2021, after Belarusian authorities said there was a bomb threat on the plane.

No explosives were found on board
Ms Tsikhanouskaya said in a tweet that Protasevich has 'been the regime's hostage since the Ryanair hijacking'.
In May this year, Protasevich announced that he had received a presidential pardon, the Belarusian state news agency reported at the time. 'I literally just signed all the relevant documents that I was pardoned.

This, of course, is just great news,' he was quoted as saying by the Belta news agency.
The human rights organisation Viasna says nearly 1,500 people have been put behind bars in Belarus in connection with opposition activities.
That includes Viasna's founder, Ales Bialiatski, one of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureates.