A pilot aboard a Ryanair jetliner forced to land in Belarus over the weekend repeatedly questioned air-traffic controllers about their request to reroute the plane to Minsk amid a purported bomb threat, according to a partial transcript released Tuesday by Belarus’ government aviation agency.

The transcript hasn’t been independently verified. . Several pilots and security experts asked to review the accounting by The Wall Street Journal said it appeared to be genuine, based on the terminology and back-and-forth typical of such conversations. Some said the Ryanair pilots, who repeatedly asked for clarification about the airport at which they were being asked to land, seemed surprised by the request to divert to Minsk.

“They definitely hesitated,“ said Ben Berman, a retired U.S. airline captain and former accident investigator who is now an airline safety consultant. ”They didn’t just accept the statement of the controller.”//

European officials have called a bomb threat improbable, and the European Union has restricted its carriers from flying over Belarus. European and U.S. officials have condemned the detour as a brazen act of interference in commercial aviation and have called for an investigation. Air industry and aviation safety officials say if the bomb threat was faked, it represents a dangerous precedent that could erode trust between commercial airlines and the countries they fly over.

Belarus has said it acted according to international protocols after receiving correspondence from Hamas, the militant group that governs the Gaza Strip, that a bomb aboard was set to detonate over Vilnius. Hamas hasn’t responded to requests for comment.