Tomas Mazetti of Sweden's advertising agency Studio Total expressed confidence that Swedish authorities would not extradite him and other representatives of the agency to Belarus over the invasion of its airspace on July 4, 2012.
"The Swedish prosecution has already stated that the punishment, if any, can only amount to a small fine," Mr. Mazetti said. "We are not worried that we'd be extradited to Belarus, that could never happen. As to the jurisdiction, I have no idea. I don't even know if they have changed their mind. It seems a complicated legal mess."
According to Agence France-Presse, the Office of the Prosecutor General of Sweden had started an investigation into teddy bear incident. In its statement, the Office says that international agreements between Sweden and Lithuania provide a legal basis for Sweden to investigate the invasion of Belarus' airspace, considering that it was perpetrated by Swedish citizens. It is to be recalled that in January, 2013 the Lithuanian Prosecutor General's Office announced that it had taken all possible efforts to investigate the incident, and "further criminal prosecution is possible only in Sweden."
"Democratic teddies"
On July, 4 hundreds of teddy bears carried in a plane piloted by two Swedes parachuted down on the small town of Ivianets and outskirts of Minsk early morning in a show of support for the country's pro-democracy movement.
The Belarusian Ministry of Defense initially rebuted the information on the teddy bear troop drop. Belarusian servicemen called the video released online "fabricated". "Experts discovered rough work with the usage of Photoshop and video editing," the Ministry officials said. At the same time, Per Cromwell, one of the founders of Swedish advertising agency Studio Total that claimed responsibility for the action, uploaded a full video version of their plane’s flight over Belarus. Beginning with installing a camera on the plane and ending with its landing at a Lithuanian aerodrome, the video proved that native air defense alert units did overlook the Swedish plane in the Belarusian air space.
After all, the Belarusian leader made a promise to punish all persons guilty of the incident involving a Swedish aircraft flying over Belarus at the government session held on July 26, 2012.
