Iran: The Brussels Court of Appeal Puts on Hold Bid to Release Assadollah Assadi

 

Written by
Mohammad Sadat Khansari

On Friday, the Brussels Court of Appeal banned the Belgian government from transferring the Iranian regime’s diplomat terrorist Assadollah Assadi to Iran.

In 2018, Assadi masterminded a terrorist plot to set off explosives at that year’s NCRI rally, which saw tens of thousands of expatriates and renowned politicians converging on an event space near Paris. The plot was ultimately thwarted by European law enforcement, but it had the potential to be the worst terrorist attack on the continent to date, and last year a Belgian court sentenced Assadi, a diplomat-terrorist, to 20 years in prison.

In March, the Iranian regime and Belgium signed a treaty to set the stage for Assadi’s release, which was revealed to the public only at the end of June, when it was presented to the Belgian parliament for ratification.

The treaty was adopted on July 20, with 79 votes in favor, 41 against, and 11 abstentions. The voting process lasted until midnight Wednesday, with Belgian opposition MPs strongly opposing the treaty.

The court order, according to the Belga news agency, stipulated that “it is provisionally forbidden to the state of Belgium, under penalty of 500,000 euros, to attempt by any means to transfer Mr. Assadollah”.

At midnight of Wednesday, July 29, 2022, after the Belgium parliament ratified the shameful bill that encourages terrorism and hostage-taking, several plaintiffs immediately filed their urgent complaint to the court.

The plaintiffs included Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance; Seyed Ahmed Ghazali, former Algerian Prime Minister; Giulio Terzi, former Italian Foreign Minister; Ingrid Betancourt, a former Colombian Senator; Linda Chavez, Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity; Robert Torricelli, former Senator from New Jersey; Tahar Boumedra, Director of JVMI and former Chief of the Human Rights Office of United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI); Dr. Sanabargh Zahedi, chair of the Judicial Committee of the NCRI; Mohammad Mohaddessin, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of NCRI; Farzin Hashemi, and Javad Dabiran, from the Foreign Affairs Committee of NCRI.

The Belgium media reported that “A lawyer acting for an exiled Iranian opposition group said the Brussels appeal court had ordered that the Belgian government not hand over Assadollah Assadi to Iran without allowing the decision to be legally challenged and confirmed by a judge.
Georges-Henri Beauthier, a lawyer acting for the exiled opposition group the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said the court had granted an order that the government’s case for any proposed release of Assadi be subject to “cross-examination before a judge.”
“Before this hearing, the Belgian state cannot proceed to a prisoner transfer,” he said.

 

Iran: The Brussels Court of Appeal Puts on Hold Bid to Release Assadollah Assadi

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