February 26, 2021
A Belgian court has convicted an Iranian diplomat of plotting the thwarted 2018 bombing of a Mojahedin-e Khalq rally outside Paris and ordered him jailed for 20 years, the maximum allowed under Belgian law.
Assadollah Assadi, now 49, was attached to the Iranian mission in Austria when he supplied explosives for the planned attack in July 2018.
After the attack was foiled, he was arrested in Germany, where he was deemed ineligible to claim diplomatic immunity.
Three accomplices, dual Iranian-Belgians, were also given jail terms of between 15 and 18 years and stripped of their Belgian citizenship.
The June 30, 2018, rally in Villepinte, near Paris, included senior leaders of the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), a Mojahedin-e Khalq dominated group, and some high-profile supporters including former US President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Belgian news reports said Assadi was captured with two notebooks describing his meetings all over Europe with operatives he was overseeing. There was also a list of payments he had made to them, which used codenames, not the true names of the operatives. One notebook listed 289 locations across Europe where Assadi met agents 114 in Germany, 42 in France, 38 in Austria and the remaining 95 scattered across Belgian, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland.
The case has shone a light on Tehran’s international operations, which has prompted more people in Europe to call for a change in Europe’s policies toward Iran.
Assadi was charged with “attempted murders of a terrorist nature” and “taking part in the activity of a terrorist group.”
The convictions and sentences were handed down by three judges in an Antwerp courtroom that was closed off even to reporters and guarded by heavily armed police with helicopters hovering above. The Belgian authorities leaked reports that Assadi had threatened attacks on Belgium interests if the country did not free him.
Ever since the arrests, Iran has argued that Assadi had diplomatic immunity and it continued to make that argument after his conviction as well. The Iranian media has not been seen to explain that diplomatic immunity applies in the country to which a diplomat is assigned and while traveling between the diplomat’s home country and his assignment. But it does not apply in third countries. Assadi was arrested in Germany.
The Iranian media also touted regime claims that Assadi was convicted based solely on information provided by Israel. European news reports said Mosad, the Israeli intelligence agency, told Europeans counterparts that Assadi was run intelligence operations. Several countries then began monitoring Assadi and he was tried on the evidence that monitoring collected.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry also said Assadi was only convicted because the country was so penetrated by the Mojahedin-e Khalq.
A Belgian-Iranian married couple, Nasimeh Naami, 36, and Amir Saadouni, 40, accepted from Assadi a half-kilo of TATP explosives and a detonator. Naami received an 18-year sentence and Saadouni 15 years.
Belgium-based Iranian poet Mehrdad Arefani, 57, was an accomplice of Assadi’s who had been due to guide the couple at the rally. He was jailed for 17 years.
Belgian officers halted the couple’s car with the bomb on board on the day of the rally.
The Belgians arrested the couple. The French arrested Arefani and the Germans arrested the diplomat.
The convictions were announced February 4, the same day the International Court of Justice announced its ruling that it has jurisdiction to try an Iranian complaint that US sanctions violate Iran’s 1955 Treaty of Amity with the United States.
The main focus of Iran’s defense of Assadi was that he was a diplomat and, as such, he enjoyed immunity from prosecution throughout the world. Iran regularly cited the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. But the convention confers no universal diplomatic immunity.
Two articles describe the limits of immunity. Article 31 states: “A diplomatic agent shall enjoy immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of the receiving state,” which in this case was Austria.
Article 40 adds: “If a diplomatic agent passes through or is on the territory of a third state, which has granted him a passport visa if such visa was necessary, while proceeding to take up or to return to his post, or when returning to his own country, the third state shall accord him inviolability and such other immunities as many be required to ensure his transit or return.”
No publication in Iran has been seen to explain these very key details.