MINSK, December 12 - RAPSI. The Belarusian Investigative Committee has filed a criminal case on the illegal crossing of republic's border by a Swedish light aircraft this year. A diplomatic scandal between Minsk and Stockholm started after teddy bears bearing supporting freedom of speech were thrown out of a Swedish plane which illegally crossed Belarusian airspace in early July.

After the incident, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry decided not to extend the accreditation of Swedish Ambassador Stefan Ericsson. Stockholm considered this as an expulsion, and so expelled the Belarusian ambassador in Sweden. Belarus then closed its embassy in Stockholm and proposed that Sweden should do the same with its embassy in Minsk.

Investigators looking into the matter found that a border guard unit quickly detected the plane when it crossed the state border from Lithuania. "The unit passed the information onto the Subbotniki border post, part of the squad responsible for protecting the state border. The person on duty there did not report this to the units officer, in violation of the established procedure," the Investigative Committees report reads.

"As no report was sent through, the air defense units of Belarus were not placed on high alert and did not detect the foreign aircraft and prevent it from crossing the state border," the committee reported.

As a result, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko dismissed State Border Committee Chairman Igor Rachkovsky and Air Force and Air Defense Commander Dmitry Pakhmelkin; a number of heads in the armed forces were also rebuked and officially reprimanded. The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus initiated a criminal case into the incident.