Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi, sentenced to twenty years in prison by the Antwerp court in June 2021, could be exchanged for two Western nationals, detained in Tehran: the Irano-Swedish scientist Ahmad Reza Jalali, former professor The University of Brussels, and the French tourist Benjamin Brière.
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The Belgian government tabled, on June 29, a bill aimed at the approval of an agreement on the transfer to Iran of convicted people. A text which, if adopted by the deputies, would notably allow the return to Tehran d’Assadollah Assadi, a diplomat sentenced by the Antwerp court, for his involvement in a bomb attack project in France.
Played by the Belgian and French fonts, the Villepinte attack (Seine-Saint-Denis), was to take place on June 30, 2018 and aim for a rally of the National Council of Iranian Resistance (CNRI), in presence tens of thousands of people, including senior European and American political leaders.
Assadollah Assadi, third advisor to the Iranian Embassy of Vienna and alleged coordinator of the action of Iranian agents in Europe, was sentenced by the Antwerp court in June 2021, after a trial where he has always refused to appear. Presented by Belgian justice as “the operational brain” of the Villepinte attack, he had not appealed his conviction to 20 years of detention. His three Belgian-Iranian accomplices received sentences from 17 to 18 years in prison, awarded sentences on appeal, and even aggravated for one of them, last May.
It was the first time that Iranian diplomat was condemned, which suggested a strong reaction from Tehran, even if the court had not clearly designated the regime as the direct sponsor of the attack. Belgian diplomacy has, in any case, been the subject of several approaches, but it only indicates that, for it, everything that could “prepare the ground for the release of Pr. Jalali” is a priority.
“Carpet merchant agreement”
Ahmad Reza Jalali, 50, an Irano-Swedish scientist, was a professor at the Flemish free university in Brussels. He was arrested in 2016 in Tehran when he was carrying out a mission and sentenced to death for espionage for the benefit of Israeli Mossad. His family has alerted many times to the deterioration of his state of health. Its execution, several times announced, was suspended, perhaps awaiting a gesture of the Belgian authorities, then confirmed on May 4.
Questioned, the cabinet of Prime Minister Alexander de Croo, who temporarily resumed the foreign affairs portfolio of his colleague Sophie Wilmès, refers to the cabinet of the Minister of Justice, Vincent Van Quickenborne. He was interviewed Thursday, June 30, in the Chamber of Deputies. Peter de Roover, a member of the Neoflamande Alliance (N-VA, conservative nationalist) asked him if an extradition of Mr. Assadi was in sight. The Flemish liberal delivered an evasive response, stressing that in matters of terrorism “impunity is not an option”, but that in the same time, Belgium wanted to “protect its nationals around the world, from where international agreements “.
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