This treaty provides for the exchanges of prisoners between Brussels and Tehran. Despite the tense context around this vote, the government lacked time and solutions to repatriate a Belgian humanitarian worker selected for five months. In the other direction, Iran requires the transfer of Assadollah Assadi, found guilty of terrorism.
Le Monde with AFP
Belgian deputies ratified a Belgian-Iranian treaty on Wednesday evening on the transfer of condemned strongly criticized by Iranian opponents in exile in Europe, who see it as the door open to the delivery to Tehran of an Iranian condemned in Belgium for terrorism. The bill including this treaty signed in March between Belgium and Iran was approved by a large majority, by 79 votes for, 41 against, and eleven abstentions.
Defended by the government, which presented it as the only way to release a Belgian humanitarian worker 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 aroused 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 delivery to Tehran, and a possible grace, by Assadollah Assadi, sentenced in 2021 in Belgium to 20 years in prison, in particular for “attempts at terrorist assassination”. The text is “tailor-made” for him, “it is a treaty of liberation of a terrorist condemned in Belgium,” denounced just before the vote Centrist Georges Dallemagne, applauded by the Flemish nationalists of the N-N-VA , the first opposition party.
pressures around Assadollah Assadi
Judged by the Antwerp Court (North), Assadollah Assadi was found guilty in February 2021 to have orchestrated a terrorist project thwarted in extremis on June 30, 2018, when Belgian police officers arrested a couple of a couple of a couple near Brussels Belgo-Iranians in possession of explosives. The couple went to France, where an attack was to aim that day near Paris the annual rally of the National Council of the Iranian Resistance (CNRI), coalition of opponents of the Tehran regime including the organization of the people’s mujahidine ( Mek).
The Antwerp judges considered that Mr. Assadi had fomented this project on behalf of the Iranian intelligence, under diplomatic coverage. So in office at the Vienna Embassy, he was arrested on July 1, 2018 in Germany, and given to Belgium three months later. The procedure ulcerated Tehran, who judged that the diplomatic immunity of Mr. Assadi had been flouted. “We are asking the Belgian government to immediately release the Iranian diplomat,” said a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
on Wednesday
At the beginning of July, by presenting the deputies this treaty “on the transfer of condemned persons”, the Belgian Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne struggled to appease the concerns and dissociate the text from the Assadi case. He recognized that as soon as the “so-called diplomat” was arrested, in a Belgian anti-terrorist justice investigation, the “interests” of Belgium in Iran and its 200 nationals have become targets of potential reprisals. “From the first day, we felt pressures from Iran and the security situation of our interests has deteriorated systematically,” said Van Quickenborne.
” A scoundrel state “
The proof of the seriousness of these threats arrived 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 scoundrel state, but we do not choose with whom we must speak”, and release Mr. Vandescasteele is “our priority”, hammered the Minister of Justice Tuesday after six hours of intense debate in the House.
Same credo on the part of Prime Minister Alexander de Croo, who has raised the tone in the face of deputies criticizing “a heinous blackmail” or “a form of resentment” of Iran with the 41 -year -old Belgian hostage. “What do you say to his family, that we are going to let him languish in his cell?”, M. de Croo thundered on July 14, “Belgium does not abandon his fellow citizens”. For his part, Mr. Vandecasteele’s family implored the authorities to “do everything” for this release, by emphasizing the degradation of the physical and mental health of the humanitarian worker.