Assadollah Assadi, 50, Mehrdad Arefani, 58, Amir Saadouni, 41, and Nasimeh Naami, 37, were arrested in June 2018, accused of being involved in an attempted bombing at an anti-Iranian regime rally in Paris. The four were handed judgements of varying prison sentences by a Belgian court in 2021.
Arefani, Saadouni, and Naami filed appeals, claiming to have been coerced and threatened into participating in the attack; Assadi has not yet filed an appeal. They previously identified Assadi as their “longtime handler,” while the latter claimed not to know them.
Their appeal was rejected by the court, keeping Naami’s sentence at 18 years, Arefani’s at 17, and increasing Saadouni’s sentence from 15 to 18. All three also had their Belgian citizenship revoked, Belgian media reported.
“The court finds the allegation by Saadouni and Naami that they assumed that the explosives would only cause noise and fireworks to be implausible,” the Antwerp-based Dutch newspaper De Morgen cited the court as saying. “Everything was meticulously prepared beforehand and the modus operandi to be used was also discussed in detail,” it continued.
Assadi, sentenced to 20 years in prison, is an Iranian diplomat widely believed to be the mastermind behind the thwarted attack. Iran has condemned the verdict, and made efforts to secure his release.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran strongly condemns the announcement by a court in Antwerp, Belgium, according to which Mr. Assadollah Assadi... was sentenced to 20 years in prison," foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh commented after Assadi’s verdict was announced in February 2021.
Iran had warned even before the conviction that it would not recognise the trial or the verdict, denying any official role in the plot and insisting Assadi ought to have enjoyed immunity from prosecution.
Ahmed Reza Jalali, 50, a Swedish-Iranian doctor who was arrested in Iran on charges of alleged spying for the Israeli government is expected to be executed later this month.
Zabihollah Khodayian, the spokesperson for Iran’s judiciary, on Tuesday ruled out the possibility of exchanging the dual national with Hamid Noury, 61, a former Iranian official on trial for war crimes in Sweden, in a move that will see Iranian and European relations further strained.
