The European Union agreed to impose sanctions on Belarus, including banning its airlines from using the airspace and airports of the 27-nation bloc, amid fury over the forced diversion of a passenger jet to arrest an opposition journalist, writes APNEWS.

Reacting to what EU leaders called a brazen “hijacking” of the Ryanair jetliner flying from Greece to Lithuania on Sunday, they also demanded the immediate release of the journalist, Raman Pratasevich, a key foe of authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

“We won’t tolerate that one can try to play Russian roulette with the lives of innocent civilians”, - said EU Council chief Charles Michel, who presided over the EU meeting.

In their unusually swift action in Brussels, the EU leaders also urged all EU-based carriers to avoid flying over Belarus, decided to impose sanctions on officials linked to Sunday’s flight diversion, and urged the International Civil Aviation Organization to start an investigation into what they viewed as an unprecedented move and what some said amounted to state terrorism or piracy.

The leaders called on their council “to adopt the necessary measures to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines and prevent access to EU airports of flights operated by such airlines”. In addition calling for the release of Pratasevich, they also urged authorities in Minsk to free his Russian girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, who was taken off the plane with him.