ANTWERP – A Belgian court convicted an Iranian diplomat Thursday forplotting a thwarted 2018 bombing of an opposition rally outside Paris andordered him jailed for 20 years.
The trial was conducted under tight security in the Belgian port of Antwerpand has further poisoned already tense relations between Tehran andEuropean capitals.
The terrorism conviction was also claimed as a victory by the exiledNational Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), the opposition group thatwas targeted for attack.
Assadollah Assadi, now 49, was attached to the Iranian mission in Austriawhen he supplied explosives for an attack that was planned for a June 30,2018 NCRI rally in France.
Belgian officers foiled the attack when they intercepted a car carrying thedevice, and Assadi was arrested the next day in Germany, where he wasdeemed unable to claim diplomatic immunity.
Three of his accomplices, dual Iranian-Belgians, were also arrested and onThursday were given jail terms of between 15 and 18 years and stripped oftheir Belgian citizenship.
The 2018 gathering in Villepinte, near Paris, included senior NCRI leadersand some high-profile supporters, including former US president DonaldTrump s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
The case has shone a light on Tehran s international operations just as ithopes the arrival of new US President Joe Biden will herald a loosening ofsanctions re-imposed by Trump.
Dressed as a tourist
Assadi was charged with “attempted murders of a terrorist nature” and”taking part in the activity of a terrorist group”.
Iran had warned even before the conviction that it would not recognise thetrial or the verdict, denying any official role in the plot and insistingAssadi ought to have enjoyed immunity from prosecution.
But investigators concluded that he was an Iranian agent working underdiplomatic cover.
They showed the court surveillance pictures of Assadi dressed as a tourist,in a hat and with a camera, handing the Belgian-Iranian couple a package inLuxembourg on June 28, 2018.
The couple — Nasimeh Naami, 36, and Amir Saadouni, 40 — were found tohave accepted from Assadi a half-kilo of TATP explosives and a detonator.
Naami, painted in court as highly manipulative, received an 18-yearsentence and Saadouni 15 years.
Belgium-based Iranian former dissident Mehrdad Arefani was found to havebeen an accomplice of Assadi s who had been due to guide the couple at therally.
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He was the only defendant to agree to appear in court for the sentencingand sat impassively as he was jailed for 17 years.
Belgian officers halted the couple s car with the bomb on board on the dayof the event, preventing what the NCRI s lawyers said would have been a”bloodbath”.
Later that year, the French government accused Iran s intelligence serviceof being behind the operation, a charge the Islamic Republic has furiouslydenied.
Iran s regime on trial
The case stirred tensions between European powers and Tehran, and wasseized upon by NCRI supporters to press their case against the Iranianregime.
The group s leader Maryam Rajavi tweeted that the convictions dealt “aheavy political and diplomatic blow to the regime in Iran”.
A Belgian lawyer acting for the group at the trial, Georges-HenriBeauthier, told reporters that the court had recognised the role of theIranian intelligence services in arming and funding the plotters.
The NCRI is the political wing of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), known inEnglish as the People s Mujahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI).
The MEK backed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1979 revolution thatousted shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, but rapidly fell out with the newauthorities.
The group sided with Iraq under Saddam Hussein in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraqwar and thousands of its alleged members were executed in a ruthlesscrackdown in Iran.
It now wages a campaign against the Islamic Republic in exile and regardsitself as the most significant opposition group outside the country.
For detractors and many Iranians who do not support Tehran s government,the MEK is a cult-like group that the West once classed as a terroristorganisation.
It is banned in Iran, but enjoys the support of several high-profile formerUS and European officials and a network of Iranian exiles opposed to theregime. -APP/AFP
