Belgian aid worker and Iranian diplomat released in prisoner exchange

Iran has released a Belgian aid worker imprisoned in Tehran for 455 days on espionage charges in exchange for Belgium’s release of a former Iranian diplomat convicted of a foiled bombing in 2021, officials from both countries said on Friday.

The aid worker, Olivier Vandecasteele, was flown late Thursday from Tehran to Muscat, Oman’s capital, where the exchange took place, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said on Friday.

“At the moment, our compatriot Olivier Vandecasteele is on his way to Belgium,” Mr De Croo said in a video address from Brussels, confirming that the government had secured Mr Vandecasteele’s release. He added that Mr Vandecasteele had undergone medical examinations to assess his health after more than a year “under very difficult circumstances”.

Mr. Vandecasteele worked in Iran for five years until he lost his job in March 2021 and left the country. When he returned to collect some belongings in February last year, he was arrested by Iranian authorities, who sentenced him to 40 years in prison and 74 lashes on charges of espionage, money laundering and currency smuggling. The Belgian government called Mr Vandecasteele’s imprisonment arbitrary and said Iran had not provided information on the case.

In exchange for Mr Vandecasteele’s release, Oman negotiated the release of Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat who was arrested in Germany in 2020 on charges of plotting a bomb attack at a meeting of Iranian opposition leaders in France in 2018. The attack was foiled, but he was later sentenced to 20 years in prison in Brussels in 2021.

Photos posted Late Friday by Mizan, a news agency overseen by the Iranian judiciary, appeared to show that Mr Assadi had arrived in Tehran.

In a statement posted to Twitter earlier Friday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian thanked the Omani government for mediating the exchange and sending Mr. Assadi, “our country’s innocent diplomat, who was illegally detained in Germany and Belgium for more than two years against international law” returned to Iran.

In July last year, Belgium’s parliament approved a much-criticized treaty with Iran that allowed the exchange of prisoners between the two countries. Critics of the treaty said the country was indulging in a form of blackmail from Iran that puts foreigners at greater risk of being held hostage.

But on Friday, Belgian authorities said they had not used the treaty when negotiating Mr Vandecasteele’s release, the Belga news agency said. However, experts say Iran has used Westerners as pawns before.

“This has been a consistent policy of the Iranian government for decades to use hostage-taking of foreigners and dual nationals for its foreign policy objectives,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the Human Rights Center in Iran, which is located in New York. “Unfortunately, this continues to work for them,” he added, noting that any prisoner exchange “only encourages the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to take more hostages.”

In a statement on Friday, Amnesty International welcomed Mr Vandecasteele’s release, but said it was “deeply troubled” by the exchange deal which only perpetuated a “climate of impunity for extraterritorially targeting Iranian dissidents for extrajudicial killings, torture and other unauthorized actions”. therapy.”

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a British-Australian scholar, was released in 2020 in an exchange for three Iranian men imprisoned in Thailand for organizing a foiled plot to assassinate Israeli diplomats in 2012.

Earlier this month, Iran released two French citizens, Benjamin Brière and Bernard Phelan, after being charged with espionage. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratliffe, a British-Iranian, was released in March after serving six years as a diplomatic pawn, according to her family.

Mr Ghaemi noted that the latest exchange had taken place against the backdrop of a spate of executions in the country. At least 209 people have been executed since January. according to the United Nations.

More than two dozen foreigners and dual nationals are still held in Iranian prisons.

Koba Ryckewaert And Leily Nikounazar reporting contributed.