Relatives of a Belgian humanitarian detained in solitary confinement in Iran since February urged the Belgian government on Friday, December 9 to act to obtain his release from the Tehran regime, saying they feared irreversible damage to his health.
During a press conference in Brussels, a sister of Olivier Vandecasteele, in tears, denounced the "
unspeakable psychological torture
" suffered by her brother, "
innocent hostage of a legal and political battle
" pitting Iran against and Belgium.
“Cut off from all human contact”
According to his family, this 40-year-old arrested on February 24 in Tehran without reason began a hunger strike in November to protest against the deterioration of his conditions of detention, in solitary confinement.
“
For 290 days he has been cut off from all human contact (...) The days pass and our family is falling apart.
We are sad, devastated, arms and legs cut off by this injustice
, ”added his sister, Nathalie Vandecasteele, under the gaze of her mother, her eyes also red with emotion.
Olivier Van Steirtegem, friend of the hostage and spokesman for the campaign for his release, asked for a meeting with Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, because "
it is time to act
" to get out of "
a complete stalemate
”.
On Thursday, the Belgian Constitutional Court "
suspended
" a Belgian-Iranian treaty for the transfer of convicts that the Belgian government had had Parliament adopt in July to allow the return of Olivier Vandecasteele.
The transfer agreement has been the subject of multiple appeals
Relatives of the hostage said they were "
extremely disappointed
".
"
The judgment defeats all the scaffolding built by the Belgian government
", according to them.
The transfer treaty, signed in March 2022 between Brussels and Tehran, shortly after the arrest of Olivier Vandecasteele, has been the subject of multiple appeals in Belgium by Iranian opponents in exile.
In the eyes of the latter, the text opens the way to the surrender to Tehran and a possible pardon of the Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi sentenced in Belgium in 2021 to 20 years in prison for a planned “
terrorist
” attack against the Iranian opposition.
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The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI, coalition of opponents), which was a civil party in these legal proceedings, considers that the planned attack in 2018 in France was “
State terrorism
”.
The organization then mobilized against the treaty, to the chagrin of relatives of the Belgian hostage, who on Friday refuted the argument that this text would be "
tailor
-made " for Assadollah Assadi.
“
The treaty model is extremely classic in terms of transfer
,” assured lawyer Olivia Venet, who defends the Vandecasteele family.
The Belgian government pledged on Friday to "
exchange in the coming days with the family
" of the hostage, a government source told AFP.
