The Antwerp court (Belgium) will deliver its judgment on January 22 in the lawsuit filed against an Iranian diplomat for a planned attack that was to target a rally of opponents of the Tehran regime in France in 2018, said Thursday, December 3. evening to AFP the lawyer of the latter.
A twenty-year prison sentence was requested last Friday against Assadollah Assadi, 48, stationed at the Iranian embassy in Vienna at the time of the facts, who denies any involvement in this terrorist project thwarted by Belgian justice.
Read also: An Iranian diplomat on trial for a planned attack in Villepinte
In this trial before the Antwerp Criminal Court, where he refused to appear, Assadi is tried with three accomplices, against whom sentences of 15 to 18 years in prison have been requested by the prosecution.
Thursday, the second and last day of the hearing, the latter proclaimed their innocence.
Lawyers for Nasimeh Naami and Amir Saadouni - a Belgian-Iranian couple arrested in possession of a bomb in their car on their way to France - claimed that the explosive was not powerful enough to kill.
As for Mehrdad Arefani, described by the prosecution as a relative of Assadi (who would have asked him to welcome the couple to the place where the bomb was to explode), his defender has refuted his involvement.
He also pleaded for his acquittal.
A bomb attack was to target on June 30, 2018 in Villepinte, near Paris, the large annual gathering of the National Council of Iranian Resistance (NCRI), a coalition of opponents including the People's Mojahedin (MEK).
The arrest in extremis, the same day in Brussels, of the Naami-Saadouni couple had made it possible to avoid a
"bloodbath"
according to the expression of the civil parties (the NCRI and about twenty political figures who support it).
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Belgian justice had quickly ascended to Assadi, spotted two days before the events in Luxembourg giving the couple a package containing the bomb.
He was arrested on July 1 in Germany, where he no longer enjoyed his diplomatic immunity.
Thursday, through the voice of his lawyer Me Dimitri de Béco, Assadollah Assadi again strongly contested that he could have been deprived of this immunity.
In his plea, Me de Béco denounced a
"violation of the rights of the defense"
justifying in his view the inadmissibility of the proceedings.
The judgment will be rendered on January 22 at 1 p.m. local time.
This dossier, mixing espionage and terrorism, has caused tensions between Iran and several European countries.
In October 2018, Paris accused the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence of being behind this abortive attack, which Tehran strongly denied.