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Minsk Airport: This is where the plane landed on Sunday
Photo: Valery Sharifulin / picture alliance / dpa / TASS
The Belarusian blogger and activist Roman Protasevich was arrested on Sunday with his girlfriend at the Minsk airport.
While it is still unclear where exactly the opposition member is being held, it has now been revealed that his Russian girlfriend Sofia Sapega is in the infamous Okrestina prison in Minsk.
Her mother made this public.
She had turned on the Russian authorities.
Anna Duditsch told the BBC's Russian service on Monday that the Ryanair plane had to make an emergency landing in Minsk.
Her daughter tried to contact her via WhatsApp, it is said, but was only able to send the word "mother".
"She didn't manage to continue writing," said Duditsch.
The reason for the arrest of the 23-year-old law student is still unclear.
Sapega had accompanied her friend Protasevich on a trip to Greece.
They wanted to return from Athens to Belarus on Sunday when their plane was forced to land by the Belarusian authorities.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Russian embassy in Belarus had requested information on Sapega.
"We met with the consul, talked, described the situation," said Sapega's mother.
"You know what happened, I hope you will help us."
Sapega's university in Lithuania, the European Humanistic University (EHU), said on Monday that Sofia Sapega had been arrested on her way to Vilnius, where she was supposed to defend her master’s thesis, "on unfounded pretexts."
The university demanded consular support and the immediate release of the Russian citizen.
The spokeswoman for the Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis confirmed the arrest of Protasevich's girlfriend.
heb / AFP