BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Three more Europeans are being freed by Iran in exchange for Iranian diplomat Asadollah Assadi, a Belgian government spokesman said on Friday.
They are a Danish national and two people with dual Austrian and Iranian nationality, the spokesman said.
This release comes within the framework of a prisoner exchange agreement which has already allowed the release a week ago by Iran of the Belgian humanitarian worker Olivier Vandecasteele.
Asadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat then stationed in Vienna, was sentenced to twenty years in prison by a Belgian court in 2021 for planning the failed attack at a meeting of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in Villepinte, near Paris in 2018.
In a statement, the Belgian government said the Danish national was arrested in Iran in November 2022 in connection with protests for women’s rights.
The two Iranian-Austrians were “wrongly arrested in […] January 2016 and January 2019,” the government said.
In a separate statement, the Austrian Foreign Ministry clarified the identity of the two men: they are Kamran Ghaderi and Massoud Mossaheb who had both been convicted of espionage.
After a stopover in Oman and medical examinations, the three people will be transported by plane to the Belgian military airport of Melsbroek.
(Report Charlotte Van Campenhout; with François Murphy in Vienna, French version Gaëlle Sheehan, edited by Blandine Hénault)
©2023 Thomson Reuters, all rights reserved. Reuters content is the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters or its third party content providers. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. “Reuters” and the Reuters Logo are trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies.