Westerners are regularly accused of spying, tried and imprisoned in Iran. Objective of the mullahs’ regime: to have means of pressure. The Iranian parliament thus approved yesterday a treaty on the transfer of prisoners between Iran and Belgium. Tehran would like to recover an Iranian convicted of terrorism, in exchange for a Belgian humanitarian arrested in Tehran.
Article written by
Published
Reading time : 1 min.
This Iranian method is well known to European chancelleries. The arrest in Iran of Westerners who then serve as bargaining chips. France is one of the countries most affected. A couple of French trade unionists were accused in early July of undermining Iran’s security. Both were imprisoned while sightseeing. At the end of June, Benjamin Brière un other french tourist detained in Iran for more than two years, had his eight-year prison sentence upheld on appeal. The most emblematic case being that of the Franco-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah, detained in Iran since 2019 and reincarcerated in January. So many means of pressure for Tehran in its strained relations with Paris.
The Iranian parliament voted Wednesday, August 3 on an agreement allowing exchanges of convicts with Belgium because the Islamic Republic wants to release an Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi, sentenced in Belgium to 20 years in prison for an attempted attack in June 2018, targeting a gathering of Iranian opponents in Villepinte in the Paris suburbs. It so happens that a Belgian aid worker was arrested in Tehran last February. His family begs the authorities to do everything to secure his release. After a heated debate, the Belgian deputies ratified on July 20 a treaty on the mutual transfer of detainees between Belgium and Iran, to the chagrin of Iranian opponents. The situation is currently frozen for legal reasons.
The examples are multiplying. Last Saturday, Iran announced the arrest of a 30-year-old Swede suspected of spying. Two weeks earlier, an Iranian had been sentenced in Sweden to life in prison for his role in the massacre of thousands of Iranian opponents in 1988.