TEHRAN, March 6. /TASS/. An agreement to swap prisoners between Iran and Belgium has failed due to the position of the Belgian side, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Nasser Kanaani told a news conference on Monday.
"Regretfully, due to changes in Belgium’s position, the agreement was suspended," the diplomat said. "As for the Iranian diplomat detained in Belgium, we have repeatedly stated that the arrest, investigation, trial and sentence were illegal, being a blatant violation of the Vienna Convention [on Diplomatic Relations]. We hope for progress in the case of this diplomat," he stressed.
Assadollah Assadi, a diplomat accredited in Brussels, was sentenced by a Belgian court to a 20-year jail term in February 2021 on charges of preparing a terrorist attack on French territory. It was maintained at court hearings that the Iranian diplomat and three of his accomplices had allegedly intended to detonate a bomb during a demonstration near Paris by the US-backed counterrevolutionary opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, also known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq. Assadi himself denied all charges, refused to attend the trial and, after the verdict had been passed, did not appeal the judgment on the grounds that he had diplomatic immunity.