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During the trial in Antwerp, the court was guarded by heavily armed security forces
Photo: DIRK WAEM / AFP
With the extradition of the Iranian diplomat Assadollah Asadi to Belgium in 2018, the federal government received severe criticism from Tehran.
The fact that a Belgian court has now found the diplomats guilty of planning a terrorist attack on Iranian opposition members in exile and sentenced them to 20 years in prison is likely to cause further reactions.
The court in Antwerp found it proven that Asadi had planned a bomb attack on opponents of the Iranian regime in France at the end of June 2018.
The verdict is attempted murder and involvement in a terrorist organization.
A representative of the Belgian prosecution spoke of "a historic day" after the guilty verdict.
The investigators probably only narrowly thwarted the bomb attack in June 2018 at the annual meeting of the National Council of Resistance Iran (NCRI) in Villepinte near Paris.
The NCRI is a Paris-based association of Iranian opposition groups that is dominated by the People's Mujahedin.
Western supporters also attended the meeting, including the lawyer for ex-US President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani.
Asadi, who was then accredited to the Iranian embassy in Vienna, was identified as the mastermind behind the attack plans.
German security officers arrested Asadi on July 1, 2018 at a motorway service station near Aschaffenburg, and he was later extradited to Belgium.
The couple involved receive long prison sentences
The attack was supposed to be carried out by an Iranian couple who were said to have been supplied with explosives and a detonator by Asadi a few days before the planned act.
The couple had been arrested in Brussels on their way to Paris - now they were sentenced to 18 and 15 years in prison respectively.
Also in the dock was the Iranian poet Mehrdad Arefani.
He is said to have been in close contact with Asadi.
The prosecution accused Arefani of spying in Belgium for his home country.
The court sentenced him to 17 years in prison.
Arefani and the couple involved are also deprived of their Belgian citizenship.
According to the indictment, Asadi is an employee of the Iranian secret service MOIS, whose tasks include monitoring and combating opposition groups inside and outside Iran.
Asadi himself had always denied the allegations and refused to appear in court, citing his diplomatic immunity.
Iran's government had also described the process as "illegal".
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fek / dpa / Reuters / AFP