President Joe Biden's administration weighs whether to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers. In its ruling, it made clear Iran was not on trial, but insisted the quartet of defendants were members of a cell operating for Iran's intelligence services gathering information about the opposition group to identify targets and set up an attack.Īssadi's conviction comes at a critical time and has the potential to embarrass his country as U.S. The court in Antwerp rejected Assadi's claims of individual immunity and said the case did not violate state immunity principles since neither Iran nor an Iranian security service stood trial. Tehran has denied having a hand in the plot.Ī spokesman for Iran's Foreign Affairs Ministry, Saeed Khatibzadeh, condemned the court decisions and said Iran did not recognize the sentence because it considers the Belgian proceedings against Assadi to have been illegal. Three other defendants were also found guilty and received lengthy jail sentences after the court ruled that they belonged to the same network.ĭuring the trial, lawyers for the plaintiffs and representatives of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq opposition group, or MEK, claimed without offering evidence that the diplomat set up the attack on direct orders from Iran's highest authorities. Prosecutors had requested the maximum prison sentence of 20 years on charges of attempted terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group.ĭefense lawyer Dimitri De Beco said Assadi would likely decide to appeal the verdict and sentence. He did not attend Thursday's hearing at the Antwerp courthouse.

The official, Assadollah Assadi, contested the charges and refused to testify during his trial last year, invoking his diplomatic status. ANTWERP, Belgium (AP) - An Iranian diplomat identified as an undercover secret agent was convicted Thursday in Belgium of masterminding a thwarted bomb attack against an exiled Iranian opposition group in France and sentenced to 20 years in prison, a legal outcome that infuriated Tehran.Ī Belgian court rejected the Vienna-based official's claim of diplomatic immunity.

Belgium diplomatic immunity murder jail