Brussels, May 26, (dpa/GNA) – Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele has been released from detention in Iran on Friday as part of controversial prisoner exchange for convicted terrorist Assadollah Assadi.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said “if all goes according to plan” then Vandecasteele will arrive in Belgium on Friday night.
Vandecasteele has been imprisoned in Iran since February 2022. He was sentenced to 40 years and 74 lashes on charges of money laundering and carrying out espionage with the United States.
The Belgian government did not initially provide details of his release. A statement from the Omani Foreign Ministry described mediating in a prisoner exchange between Iran and Belgium.
Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib tweeted that Vandecasteele’s release followed “15 months of intense and discreet diplomacy.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amirabdollahian later confirmed on Twitter that Assadi had been released. Amirabdollahian thanked Oman for their assistance.
Assadi’s return is controversial and is tangled up in a long-running legal saga in the Belgian courts. Exiled Iranians had tried to prevent the deal until the very end.
Assadi, arrested in Germany in 2018, had received a 20-year sentence by a court in Antwerp in 2021 for allegedly planning an explosive attack on a rally of exiled Iranian opposition members in France.
The case is particularly contentious as, according to investigations leading to his conviction, 51-year-old Assadi is an employee of the Iranian secret service, whose tasks include observing and fighting opposition groups inside and outside Iran.
It is therefore possible that the attack plans in France were based on a direct state order.
GNA