Article author:
Reuters
Philip Blenkinsop
Brussels — Belgian legislators granted the first permission to the prisoner exchange treaty with Iran on Wednesday. An exiled opposition group rally.
The Belgian House of Representatives Diplomatic Committee discussed the treaty for more than six hours in two days before final approval.
This measure will probably have to be submitted to the House of Representatives for 150 people in the next two weeks, but due to the similar composition of the committee, Congress usually follows the vote of the committee. ..
Prisoner exchange was detained in Iran in February, taught in Belgium, and died in Iran.
Iran has demanded the release of Asadora Asadi. This was a failed 2018 bomb program, sentenced to 20 years in Belgium in 2021. He was the first trial of Iranian officials suspected of terrorism in Europe since the 1979 revolution in Iran.
It is not clear when the prisoner exchange will take place.
Some lawmakers have expressed concern that the treaty, as proposed, could lead to "hostage diplomacy" and put other Belgians at risk of detention.
The exiled Iranian Resistance Council (NCRI) called the treaty "shameful" as the 2018 rally near Paris was the target of the bomb program, and Asadi should stay in prison. Stated.
"If he was successful, hundreds would have been killed," said Farzin Hashemi, vice chairman of the NCRI Foreign Relations Commission, near the Belgian Parliament. Said in a protest by about 100 NCRI members.
"Experience over the last 40 years has shown that concessions to the terrorist regime only make it bold and endanger the lives of more innocent people," he said. ..
The Islamic Republic dismisses all accusations of terrorism and calls the allegations of the Paris attack a "false flag" stunt by NCRI, which NCRI considers a terrorist group. (Report by Philip Blenkinsop, edited by Mark Heinrich)
