Belgium jails Iranian diplomat for 20 years over foiled terror plot
All four defendants on trial were found guilty by the Antwerp criminal court of attempted terrorist murder and of membership in a larger terrorist group within Iran's domestic intelligence apparatus.
Their intended target was a large rally on June 30, 2018, in the town of Villepinte near Paris, organized by the opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which is banned in Iran.
Thousands of people attended the event, including prominent political personalities such as former US President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Investigators say that had the attack gone ahead, it could have
resulted in numerous deaths and injuries. Instead, it was thwarted by police in Belgium, France and Germany.
Assadollah A was accredited as a diplomat at the Iranian embassy in Vienna at the time of the crime, and was described as the operational leader of the plan in an official court statement.
German investigators previously said the 49-year-old was believed to belong to the Iranian intelligence ministry MOIS, the tasks of which include monitoring and combating opposition groups inside and outside Iran.
The other three defendants were Belgian-Iranian dual nationals - including a married couple - tasked with carrying out the attack. They were stripped of their citizenship by the European state, and received custodial sentences between 15 and 18 years in length.
The link to Iranian intelligence authorities was clear from "sums of money paid to the defendants, the way information was gathered, the meetings in Iran, the use of diplomatic status, and the making and testing of the explosive device in Iran itself," the court statement read.
According to investigators in Germany, Assadollah A commissioned the couple living in Belgium with the attack and handed over to them in Luxembourg a device containing 500 grams of TATP explosives.
Belgian special forces were able to stop and arrest the couple in
time with the explosives in their car on their way to France.
The third man was detained at the rally, while Assadollah A was arrested in Germany and handed over to Belgium.
Thursday's ruling comes at a sensitive moment in relations between Iran and western countries hoping that the inauguration of US President Joe Biden can help repair damage to the 2015 nuclear deal sustained in the previous administration under Donald Trump.
Iran strongly condemned the verdict against Assadollah A, and reiterated claims that the terror plans were orchestrated by opponents of the regime.
"The entire procedure in this case was a clear violation of internationally derogated norms and in particular the 1961 Geneva Convention," said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh.
Belgium and some European countries had allowed themselves to be blinded by the propaganda of a "terrorist group" (NCRI), Khatibzadeh said in a statement published on the ministry website.
The NCRI welcomed the ruling in a statement from their president, Maryam Rajavi. She accused the highest echelons of Iran's government of complicity in the plot, and called on EU countries to recall their ambassadors from Iran and close Iranian embassies in the bloc.
A European Commission spokesperson said the EU executive would now examine the verdict and its implications, pointing out that Assadollah A was already on the bloc's counter-terrorism sanctions list.
