Iranian opponents, in exile in Europe, see the door open to the handing over to Tehran of Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian convicted in Belgium of terrorism.

Belgian deputies ratified, on the evening of Wednesday July 20, a Belgian-Iranian treaty on the transfer of convicts.

The bill, including this treaty signed in March between Belgium and Iran, was approved by a large majority, with 79 votes in favor, 41 against and eleven abstentions.

Defended by the government, which presented it as the only way to free a Belgian aid worker who had been held hostage for five months in Tehran, the text had already been approved in committee on July 6.

Since the revelation of its content three weeks ago, this bilateral treaty has sparked a fiery debate in Parliament, where the same concerns have been expressed as those of Iranian opponents and their supporters.

These opponents believe that the text opens the way to a surrender to Tehran, and a possible pardon, of Assadollah Assadi, sentenced in 2021 in Belgium to 20 years in prison in particular for "attempted terrorist assassination".

The text is "tailor-made" for him, "it's a treaty for the release of a terrorist convicted in Belgium", denounced just before the vote the centrist deputy Georges Dallemand, applauded by the Flemish nationalists of the N-VA , the first opposition party.

Tehran demands the release of Assadollah Assadi

Tried by the court of Antwerp (north), Assadollah Assadi was found guilty in February 2021 of having orchestrated a terrorist project foiled in extremis on June 30, 2018, when Belgian police officers arrested near Brussels a couple of Belgian-Iranians in possession of explosives.

The couple was traveling to France, where an attack was to target that day near Paris the annual gathering of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a coalition of opponents of the Tehran regime including the People's Mojahedin Organization ( MEK).

The Antwerp judges considered that Assadollah Assadi had fomented this project on behalf of Iranian intelligence, under diplomatic cover.

While stationed at the Vienna Embassy, ​​he was arrested on July 1, 2018 in Germany, and returned to Belgium three months later.

The procedure angered Tehran, which ruled that Assadollah Assadi's diplomatic immunity had been flouted.

"We ask the Belgian government to immediately release the Iranian diplomat," a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry said again on Wednesday.

At the beginning of July, when presenting this treaty to the deputies, the Belgian Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne struggled to allay concerns and dissociate the text from the Assadi case.

He acknowledged that as soon as the "so-called diplomat" was arrested, Belgium's "interests" in Iran and its 200 nationals became targets of potential reprisals.

"From day one, we felt pressure from Iran and the security situation of our interests deteriorated systematically," said Vincent Van Quickenborne.

A ratification to release a Belgian hostage

The proof of the seriousness of these threats came on February 24, when a Belgian humanitarian worker, Olivier Vandecasteele, was arrested without reason in Tehran, which today justifies in the eyes of the Belgian executive an urgent ratification of the treaty signed on March 11 in Brussels.

"Iran is a villainous state, but we don't choose who we should talk to", and releasing Olivier Vandescasteele is "our priority", hammered the Minister of Justice on Tuesday after six hours of intense debate in the House.

Same credo from Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who raised his voice in the face of deputies criticizing "odious blackmail" or "a form of ransom" from Iran with the 41-year-old Belgian hostage.

“What do you say to his family, that we are going to let him rot in his cell?” thundered Alexander De Croo on July 14.

"Belgium does not abandon its fellow citizens."

For their part, the family of Olivier Vandecasteele implored the authorities to "do everything" for this release, insisting on the deterioration of the physical and mental health of the humanitarian worker.

With AFP

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