Of course they can. They’ll even be invited to stay for a while, although trips to Disney World won’t be on their itinerary.
“The US has charged four Belarusian officials with aircraft piracy over the diversion of a passenger plane to Minsk last May,” BBC reported on Friday, January 21, 2022 (read story here).
“If they were tried in a US court they would face a life sentence,” BBC said. A Ryanair flight from Athens to Lithuania on May 23, 2021, with a Belarusian dissident journalist aboard, was intercepted by a Belarusian fighter jet and told to land at Minsk, the Belarusian capital, because of a bomb threat. BBC says, “Earlier this week a UN report concluded the bomb threat was deliberately false.”
The journalist was arrested when the plane landed, It was a planned kidnapping, ordered by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, a Putin protege who has ruled the former Soviet province since shortly after the breakup of the U.S.S.R.
Four Americans were aboard the plane, according to ABC News (here), which presumably is why the U.S. claims to have criminal jurisdiction over the Belarusian officials who carried out Lukashenko’s orders, although interestingly Lukashenko himself isn’t being charged.
Photo: Would Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko’s mother approve of his conduct?