Iranian diplomat jailed for 20 years for French bomb plot
An Iranian diplomat has been convicted of masterminding an attempted bomb attack in Paris in 2018. Assadollah Assadi, 49, was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a Belgian court for attempted terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group. The verdict marks the first time an Iranian official has faced such charges in the EU since the 1979 revolution.
Assadi, who worked at the Iranian embassy in Vienna, contested all the charges against him. He has claimed diplomatic status and did not attend today’s hearing. Assadi’s lawyer, Dimitri De Beco, said he was likely to appeal.
The target of the foiled bomb plot was a large French rally held by the exiled National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in June 2018. The NCRI is considered to be the political arm of Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), a dissident group that backs the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.
An estimated 25,000 people attended the rally in the French town of Villepinte, in the north of Paris, including Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s lawyer, and five British MPs.
Assadi was arrested in Germany in June 2018, days after he met a Belgian couple of Iranian origin at a Pizza Hut in Luxembourg. The couple, Nasimeh Naami and Amir Saadouni were arrested in Brussels with 550 grams of the unstable TATP explosive and a detonator in their luggage. Belgium’s bomb disposal unit said that the device was of professional quality and could have caused a sizable explosion and panic in the crowd.
A fourth man, Belgian-Iranian poet Merhad Arefani, was also arrested in Paris and accused of being an accomplice. All three were convicted of taking part in the plot and given jail terms of 15 to 18 years.
During the trial, lawyers for the plaintiffs and representatives of MEK claimed without offering evidence that Assadi set up the attack on direct orders from Iran’s highest authorities. Tehran insists the plot was a fabrication.
Maryam Rajavi, the leader of MEK, described the conviction as “a brilliant victory for the people and resistance of Iran and a heavy political and diplomatic defeat for the regime”.
Outside the court, prosecution lawyer Georges-Henri Beauthier told Reuters: “The ruling shows two things: a diplomat doesn’t have immunity for criminal acts… and the responsibility of the Iranian state in what could have been carnage.”
In a statement, an Iranian foreign ministry official strongly objected to Assadi’s arrest, trial and sentencing, condemning the process as “illegal and a clear violation of international law, especially the 1961 Vienna Convention (on diplomatic relations)”.
Today’s conviction comes at a critical time for Iran’s relationship with the US. The Biden administration is considering whether to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers, and Iran is hoping Washington will reverse some of the economic sanctions introduced by Trump after he pulled America out of the nuclear deal in 2018.
The trial is also likely to prompt major policy changes within Europe. Two days before the verdict, 40 members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) sent an open letter to the body President urging a change in European policy toward Iran.
The letter put pressure on the EU leadership to hold Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif accountable for the actions of diplomat-terrorists who ultimately report to his office. The same recommendation had reportedly been offered earlier in the month by a group of former government ministers representing more than a dozen European countries.
The group of PACE members, led by former Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi, went on to suggest that the nations of Europe collectively “downgrade” their diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic and use the enhanced isolation to demand that Tehran provide “assurances that it will never engage in terrorism in Europe again”.