Belgium ratifies prisoner exchange deal with Iran
printveela
july 21 2022
BRUSSELS. After two days of heated debate, the Belgian parliament approved a much-criticized treaty with Iran that allows the exchange of prisoners between the two countries.
In late February, Iranian authorities detained Belgian humanitarian worker Olivier Vandecastile, 41, on charges of espionage. His arrest was not made public, but Belgium signed a prisoner exchange treaty with Iran on March 11, which was ratified on Wednesday.
Mr. Vandecastil worked in Iran for five years for several non-governmental aid organizations, but left in March 2021 after losing his job. He returned in February to collect his personal belongings, but was arrested and imprisoned on charges of espionage that the Belgian government called unfounded.
Mr. Vandecastile’s family only learned of Mr. Vandecastile’s detention this month.
Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Kuickenborn defended the treaty before legislators. “Iran is a rogue state, but we don’t choose who we talk to,” he said, stressing that the release of Mr. Vandecastile was “our priority.”
But opposition lawmakers, led by the New Flemish Alliance, a right-wing nationalist party, said the government was being blackmailed by Tehran and putting more Belgians at risk.
Prime Minister Alexander De Croo insisted that the treaty was the only way to secure Mr. Vandecastile’s release. “Belgium does not abandon its citizens,” he said in parliament. “What will you tell his family that we will leave him to rot in a cell?”
Iran has pushed for the return of an Iranian diplomat convicted last year in Belgium to 20 years in prison for plotting to blow up a 2018 meeting of Iranian opposition leaders in France, critics say. If the diplomat is allowed to return to Iran, critics say, he is likely to be immediately released rather than serve his term there.
Diplomat Asadollah Asadi, 50, was found guilty in February 2021 of plotting and providing explosives to a Belgian-Iranian couple to attack the annual meeting of Iran’s National Resistance Council, which usually includes prominent foreign supporters such as former FBI chief Louis J. Free and Rudolph W. Giuliani, former mayor of New York.
The Belgian court ruled that Mr. Asadi was working for Iranian intelligence under his diplomatic cover from the Iranian embassy in Austria and therefore had no immunity in Belgium.
Iran demanded his release, and even Mr. Van Kuickenborn told Parliament that after Mr. Assadi’s arrest, Belgium and 200 of its citizens were targeted in Iran. “From day one, we felt pressure from Iran, and the situation with the security of our interests systematically worsened,” he said. But he denied any direct connection between the treaty and the Assadi affair.
In a statement Thursday, Iran’s National Resistance Council, which has actively opposed the treaty, condemned its ratification as “shameful.” The Belgian vote, he said, would serve as “the highest incentive for the religious fascism ruling Iran to increase terrorism and use hostage-taking as much as possible to free arrested terrorists and agents.”
The council is the political wing of the Khalq mujahideen, seeking to overthrow Iran’s Islamic government.
The agreement will allow Iranians convicted in Belgium to serve their sentences in Iran, and Belgians convicted in Iran to serve their sentences in Belgium. But the treaty also allows each side to declare an amnesty, and critics say there is no doubt that Mr. Asadi will be released.
Mr. Asadi, prosecutors said at his trial, brought about a pound of triacetone triperoxide explosive and a detonator in his luggage from Iran to Vienna, and then took it to Luxembourg. There, he handed it over on June 30, 2018 to an Iranian-Belgian couple at Pizza Hut. Mr. Asadi was arrested at a gas station in Germany, where he did not have diplomatic immunity, on his way back to Austria.
The couple received political asylum and then citizenship in Belgium. They were arrested on their way to Paris from Antwerp on the day of the rally. The fourth defendant was an associate of Mr. Assadi who was supposed to accompany the couple to the rally.
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