By Clement Rossignol and Robin Emmott
ANTWERP, Belgium (Reuters) – An Iranian diplomat accused of planning to bomb a meeting of an exiled opposition group was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday in the first trial of an Iranian official for suspected terrorism in the European Union since Iran’s 1979 revolution.
Belgian prosecution lawyers and civil parties to the prosecution said Vienna-based diplomat Assadolah Assadi was guilty of attempted terrorism after a plot to bomb a rally of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) near Paris in June 2018 was foiled by German, French and Belgian police.
“The ruling shows two things: A diplomat doesn’t have immunity for criminal acts … and the responsibility of the Iranian state in what could have been carnage,” Belgian prosecution lawyer Georges-Henri Beauthier told reporters outside the court in Antwerp.
Reporters and members of the public were not allowed into the courtroom, which was heavily guarded by police and armoured vehicles, with police helicopters overhead.
(Reporting by Clement Rossignol in Antwerp and Robin Emmott in Brussels, additional reporting by John Irish in Paris, editing by Marine Strauss)
