TEHRAN (Iran News) – Iranian diplomat Asadollah Asadi dropped appeal to the Belgian court after protesting the court is not qualified to judge the case and will serve his illegal sentence of 20-year imprisonment, his lawyer Dimitri de Beo said.
Asadi decided not to appeal, his lawyer Dimitri de Beco told reporters on Wednesday in Antwerp, the Belgian city where the diplomat was sentenced on February 4.
“This has been a political trial since the beginning and he does not want to participate any longer,” de Beco said, adding that Asadi had diplomatic immunity at Iran’s embassy in Vienna.
However, judges had ruled that diplomatic immunity did not protect him from allegations.
Asadi who served as the third secretary of the Iranian Embassy in Austria was arrested in Germany in 2018 and was extradited to Belgium. He is accused of allegedly planning the bombing and providing the explosives to an Iranian couple from Brussels.
Iran has always denied the allegations against its diplomat and in July 2018 summoned the French and Belgian ambassadors and Germany’s chargé d’affaires in protest at his arrest in Germany.
In relevant remarks in February, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh condemned the Belgian court’s issuing a 20-year prison sentence for diplomat Asadollah Asadi, stressing that the decision has been made under the influence of the MKO terrorist outfit.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran strongly condemns the announcement of the Belgian Court of Antwerp to issue a 20-year prison sentence for Asadi,” Khatibzadeh said on Thursday February 4 in reaction to the Belgian Court’s ruling on Iranian diplomat, adding, “Unfortunately, Belgium and some European countries, under the influence of the machination of the Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) terrorist group, have committed such an illegal and unjustifiable act.”
He went on to say that as Iran has stated several times, all stages of Asadi’s detention, the judicial process, the issuance of the recent sentence are illegal and in flagrant violation of international law, particularly the provisions of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
“Therefore, they [Europeans] should be held accountable for the gross violations of the rights of the Iranian diplomat, including the inhumane conditions that he faced while in detention in Germany and Belgium,” Khatibzadeh noted.
The spokesman emphasized that Iran reserves the right to employ all possible legal and diplomatic means to exercise the rights of Asadollah Asadi and to hold accountable governments that have violated their international obligations.
