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The trial starts in Antwerp: The four defendants are accused of planning a terrorist attack
Photo: Dirk Waem / dpa
An Iranian diplomat charged with alleged plans to attack in France refused to take part in his trial in Belgium.
His client Assadollah A. invokes his diplomatic immunity, said the lawyer of the main defendant, Dimitri de Beco, in front of the courthouse in Antwerp.
Only the three other defendants sat in the dock at the start of the trial.
The prosecutor accuses the four defendants of planning a terrorist attack and participating in the activities of a terrorist group.
If found guilty, they face up to 20 years in prison.
(Read more about the case here.)
The diplomat, accredited in Vienna, was arrested in Bavaria in July 2018 and extradited to Belgium three months later.
The basis was a European arrest warrant that the Belgian judiciary had requested.
The Belgian public prosecutor responsible for terrorism suspects A. to have been involved in planning an attack on Iranian opposition members in France.
According to the investigators' findings, A. is said to be an employee of the Iranian secret service Mois, whose tasks include monitoring and combating opposition groups inside and outside Iran.
It is therefore considered possible that the attack plans were based on a direct government mandate.
Iran regards As's arrest as "illegal" and denounces a violation of its diplomatic immunity.
Lawyer de Beco said the court did not have the power to hear A.
Therefore, he will represent his client in the process.
The investigators said they had thwarted a bomb attack on the annual meeting of the National Council of Resistance Iran (NCRI) in Villepinte near Paris on June 30, 2018.
The NCRI is a Paris-based association of Iranian opposition groups.
The three other accused are a Belgian-Iranian couple arrested on the day of the planned attack in Brussels and an Iranian poet.
Investigators discovered explosives and a detonator in the couple's car.
The poet, who has lived in exile in Belgium for several years, is said to have telephoned A. regularly.
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asa / AFP / dpa
