ANTWERP, Belgium (AP) – An Iranian diplomat identified as an undercover secret agent was convicted in Belgium on Thursday of masterminding a foiled bombing of an exiled Iranian opposition group in France and sentenced to 20 years in prison, a legal outcome infuriated Tehran. made.
A Belgian court rejected the Vienna-based official’s claim of diplomatic immunity. The official, Assadollah Assadi, disputed the charges and declined to testify at his trial last year, invoking his diplomatic status. He was not present at the hearing in the Antwerp court building on Thursday.
Prosecutors had requested the maximum term of imprisonment of 20 years on charges of attempted terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group.
Lawyer Dimitri De Beco said Assadi would likely decide to appeal the verdict and sentence. Three other defendants were also found guilty and served long prison terms after the court ruled that they belonged to the same network.
At trial, attorneys for prosecutors and representatives of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq opposition group, or MEK, claimed without providing evidence that the diplomat had mounted the attack on direct orders from Iran’s highest authorities. Tehran has denied having a hand in the plot.
A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Saeed Khatibzadeh, condemned the court’s rulings, saying Iran has not recognized the verdict because it considers Belgium’s proceedings against Assadi illegal.
The court in Antwerp rejected Assadi’s claims to individual immunity, saying the case did not violate the principles of state immunity, as neither Iran nor any Iranian security forces were on trial.
In its ruling, it made it clear that Iran will not be on trial, but insisted that the quartet of defendants was a member of a cell operating for Iranian intelligence services gathering information about the opposition group to identify targets and carry out an attack.
Assadi’s conviction comes at a critical time and could embarrass his country as US President Joe Biden’s administration is weighing whether to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers. Iran also said last month that it expects Washington to lift economic sanctions former President Donald Trump imposed on the country after pulling America out of the atomic deal in 2018.
The European Union focused its response specifically on Assadi and did not attract Iran as a nation. “This person’s actions are completely unacceptable. That’s a fact. The other aspect I can add is that the person in question is already on the EU counter-terrorism list, ”said EU spokesman Peter Stano.
The Belgian government said the ruling was self-contained, separate from diplomacy and international relations.
“The bottom line is that the justice system has today ruled on terrorist offenses and made a clear statement on them. And it must be able to do that in complete independence. Otherwise we will no longer live in a constitutional state, ”said Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne.
On June 30, 2018, Belgian police officers tipped off by intelligence services about a possible attack on the MEK annual meeting, detained a couple traveling in a Mercedes car. In their luggage they found 550 grams of the unstable TATP explosive and a detonator.
According to the Belgian bomb disposal unit, the device was of professional quality. It could have caused quite an explosion and panic in the crowd, an estimated 25,000 people, who had gathered that day in the French town of Villepinte, north of Paris.
Among the dozens of prominent guests at the day’s rally were Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani; Newt Gingrich, former Conservative speaker for the US House of Representatives; and former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt.
Assadi was arrested in Germany a day later and transferred to Belgium. Since Assadi was on vacation at the time of his arrest – and not in Austria, where he was accredited – the court said he was not entitled to immunity.
A report from the Belgian intelligence and security service, seen by The Associated Press, identified him as an officer of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security operating undercover at the Iranian embassy in Austria. Belgian state security officials said he worked for so-called Department 312 of the ministry, the directorate for internal security, which is on a European Union list of organizations that the EU considers terrorist groups.
Prosecutors identified Assadi as the alleged “operational commander” of the planned attack and accused him of recruiting the couple – Amir Saadouni and Nasimeh Naami – years earlier. Both were of Iranian descent.
Saadouni was sentenced to 15 years in prison, while Naami was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
According to the investigation, Assadi transported the explosives to Austria on a commercial flight from Iran and later handed the bomb over to the couple at a meeting at a Pizza Hut restaurant in Luxembourg. The ruling confirmed that the explosives were made and tested in Iran.
The fourth defendant, Mehrdad Arefani, was sentenced to 17 years in prison.
Iran’s National Resistance Council is part of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, an exiled Iranian opposition group largely based in Albania and Paris.
It was founded in 1965 by students who embraced both Marxism and Islamic rule while trying to overthrow the ruling Shah. They have been blamed for murdering Americans in the 1970s and subsequent murders and bombings, attacks in which the group now denies being involved.
They were expelled from Iran in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution and joined Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the fight against Iran, making them incredibly unpopular in their country. The group has sought to restore its image in recent years by paying tens of thousands of dollars in speaker money to US politicians. The MEK says it has renounced violence in 2001.
The organization’s leader, Maryam Rajavi, welcomed the ruling, reiterating her claims that Assadi’s plot had been sanctioned by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“The time has come for the European Union to take action,” she said, urging EU countries to recall their ambassadors from Tehran in light of the ruling.
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Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Angela Charlton in Paris, Raf Casert in Brussels and Jon Gambrell in Dubai contributed to this report.