DDetained since May 2020 by the Iranian authorities, Frenchman Benjamin Brière could find freedom – indirectly – thanks to a Belgian law, reveals The world. Still far from being voted on, a bill has been tabled by the government in Brussels before the country’s Parliament to authorize the transfer of Iranian detainees from Belgium to their country of origin. If the parliamentarians accepted this text, this could then pave the way for the expulsion of Assadollah Assadi in exchange for two Western hostages: Professor Ahmad Reza Jalali and Benjamin Brière, indicates a diplomatic source. The Frenchman was sentenced last January to eight years in prison for “espionage”.
The Iranian Assadollah Assadi is far from being a perfect stranger. Indeed, he was sentenced in June 2021 – to twenty years in prison – for having been the “operational brain” of a failed attack on French soil: a bomb attack on a National Council of Resistance of Iran rally, on June 30, 2018, in Villepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis). This one will be arrested in October of the same year in Germany, before being sent to Belgium. Indeed, even if the attack was to take place in France, the attack having been thwarted from the flat country, it was the Belgian authorities who opened an investigation for “attempted terrorist assassination”.
Furthermore, Assadi was until his arrest the third adviser to the Iranian Embassy in Vienna. Upon his arrest, Tehran had asserted the diplomatic immunity of its national to explain that it would not recognize the verdict. In the wake of the conviction, tensions had redoubled between Iran and Belgium, especially since the Iranian authorities have been using Western detainees on its soil for several years. as currency to negotiate with Westerners.
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The fate of Assadi linked to a professor detained in Iran?
It is in this context, therefore, that the case of Ahmad Reza Jalali, a university professor in Brussels, could be linked to Assadi. Indeed, since 2016, he has been detained in Iran and has been sentenced to death. Belgian diplomacy explaining that any discussion to “prepare the ground for the release of Professor Jalali” is a priority. The execution of the academic had been suspended until his confirmation last May.
Publicly, the Belgian authorities kick in touch on the existence – or not – of negotiations on the fate of Ahmad Reza Jalali. On June 30, before the deputies, the Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne simply indicated that “impunity was not an option” during the debates on the bill tabled by the government. However, at the same time, he assured that Brussels wanted to “protect its nationals all over the world, from where [la nécessité, NDLR] international agreements”.
Until now, Belgium had been very hesitant about the idea of putting in the balance detainees of Iranian nationality. A nervousness which, it seems, has disappeared. “What has changed is the international context and the desire to unfreeze relations with a potential gas and oil supplier”, confides an anonymous diplomatic source to our colleagues. This indicating that the release – possible – of the university professor could well be linked to that of the French Benjamin Briere, among others. For the time being, the Quai d’Orsay has not reacted on this point. Last January, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had described the detention of the tourist “unacceptable”.
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