EU urged to act against Iran after diplomat jailed in Belgium for bomb plot

The EU has been urged to act against Iran after a diplomat was jailed for 20 years by a Belgian court on Thursday over a failed bomb plot.

Assadollah Assadi and three accomplices were convicted of planning to attack an Iranian opposition rally involving senior US and European statesmen in the outskirts of Paris in June 2018.

Assadi is believed to have carried the explosives into Europe in diplomatic baggage on a flight from Iran. The attack was foiled by a pan-European policing operation.

European officials focused their reaction on Assadi, 49, rather than ultimate responsibility for ordering the attack that went to the highest levels of the regime.

“The acts committed by this person are completely unacceptable. That’s a fact,” EU spokesman Peter Stano said. “The other aspect I can add is that the person in question is already on the EU counter-terrorism list."

Politicians and the Iranian dissidents called for Tehran's embassies to be closed, staff expelled and legal action taken against leaders after the country’s diplomatic network was used to smuggle explosives into the European Union.

Former US homeland security chief Tom Ridge said: “Rhetorical condemnation without further action will have little action on this rogue regime. Countries whose citizens were in harm’s way at the event… should consider downgrading diplomatic relations with Iran."

He called for Foreign Minster Javad Zarif to be held accountable for “his use of the diplomatic pouch, the diplomatic corps, the embassies and the missions as hubs for their terrorist activities”.

The Belgian government said that the decision was made by its judiciary, independent of foreign policy issues. “What matters is that today the justice system has ruled on facts of terrorism and made a clear statement about it,” Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne said.

The NCRI’s leader Maryam Rajavi welcomed the verdicts and reasserted her claims that Assadi's plot was approved by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“The time has come for the European Union to take action," she said, urging EU countries to recall their ambassadors from Tehran in light of the ruling.

The EU has sought closer diplomatic and economic relations with Tehran but says it cannot turn a blind eye to human rights abuses or terrorism.

Asked by the European Parliament on January 25 if the trial had any bearing on relations with Iran, or if the EU had discussed Assadi’s warnings of possible retaliation, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell declined to comment.

European countries have blamed Iran for other suspected moves against dissidents, including two killings in the Netherlands in 2015 and 2017 and a foiled assassination in Denmark.

Iran, meanwhile, rejected Thursday verdict. "As we have stated many times before, Assadolah Assadi's detention, the judicial process and the recent sentencing are illegal and a clear violation of international law, especially the 1961 Vienna Convention," Saeed Khatibzadeh, a foreign ministry spokesman, said.

The court heard Assadi booked rooms in six hotels for a family trip that doubled as a scouting trip in June 2018.

A green-covered notebook found Assadi’s car gave details of some of the tourist spots that the family may have visited during the trip.

Here, The National profiles the plotters:

Assadollah Assadi — jailed for 20 years

The Vienna-based diplomat was the key player in the Paris bomb plot, supplying the bomb and the instructions to carry out the attack while acting on orders from Tehran.

Assadi was identified officially as third counsellor at the embassy in Austria — one of 18 diplomats posted there — but prosecutors said he was one of Iran’s most senior intelligence operatives in Europe.

He previously served as a diplomat from 2003 to 2008 in Iraq and was said to be an expert in handling explosives. He seemed sufficiently confident of his knowledge of explosives to drive around with the bomb in a car with his wife and two sons.

Despite his seniority, he appeared to have made a series of rudimentary blunders that pointed to his involvement in the crime. He left notes of his agent network in his car and failed to wipe his sat-nav, which showed that he had carried out a recce of the dissidents’ rally the previous year.

Amir Saadouni — jailed for 15 years

A former supporter — if not member — of the group he was sent to attack, Amir Saadouni, 40, was described as naive and easily manipulated by both his wife and Assadi.

He says that he was the subject of a long-period of grooming by Iranian agents and only met Assadi in 2015 after approaches by two other people, he claimed.

He confessed to his role in the plot when questioned by officers and claimed that the blast was not intended to hurt anyone — a claim dismissed by the Belgian court.

Friends told The National after his arrest that he only claimed to be a dissident to prove that he was fleeing from oppression to secure Belgian citizenship.

A friend who claimed to have known him for 15 years said that he was a kind man who worked in a shop and a port warehouse and enjoyed playing football and computer games. Saadouni told detectives that “due to all the stress”, he and his wife were getting divorced.

Nasimeh Naami — jailed for 18 years

Two stories emerged of Nasimeh Naami, 36, following her arrest. Friends said she worked a few nights a week in a shop and was a creature of routine.

To investigators, she was a highly manipulative woman with closer links to Iran’s ministry of intelligence than she was letting on.

She always travelled with her husband to meet Assadi and they received thousands of euros for their work from the spymaster — money they have now been told to pay back.

The couple were said to have met online while she was still in Belgium and moved to Belgium where they lived together in a rented flat.

She even manipulated her own husband by creating a fake identity online and pretending to be a woman from Iran called 'Negar' to flirt with her husband, talk to him about the plot and urge him to place the explosive inside the convention hall.

Mehrdad Arefani — jailed for 17 years

The Belgium-based Arefani promoted himself as a dissident poet and writer who claimed to have fled to Europe about two decades ago to avoid persecution. The 57 year old was on the fringes of the movement but was in reality the eyes and ears of Assadi for the Iranian operation.

Spying equipment was found at his home in Brussels, including spectacles with a hidden camera and photographs of the offices of the dissident group the People’s Mujahedin Organisation of Iran, which was targeted in the plot.

His role had been to guide the couple at the rally — but they never got there. He was well-paid for his work and police confiscated €226,000 ($270,500) that he had been paid by Assadi, the court was told. He was the only one of the four defendants to appear in court for the sentencing.