Authorities in Iran confirmed Tuesday that Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele has been sentenced to 40 years in prison and 74 lashes after being found guilty of several charges, including spying for the U.S. government.
He was also charged with money laundering and currency smuggling. Vandecasteele was arrested on February 24, 2021 and was subsequently charged by Tehran with espionage after more than six years working in Iran for foreign NGOs, according to reports in the daily ‘Le Soir’.
The sentence, which can be appealed within 20 days, provides for three sentences of 12.5 years in prison and a fourth of 2.5 years, reports the official portal Mizan, linked to the Iranian judiciary.
The Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hadja Lahbib, has recognized that her government is not aware of any «official information» on the charges against the accused, and has therefore announced that she will summon the Iranian ambassador to Belgium to clarify «the information published in the media».
However, he insisted that the Belgian authorities continue to consider that it is an «arbitrary» detention and promised that they will do «everything possible» to put an end to it and improve the conditions in which Vandecasteele is being held.
The future of this citizen is linked to that of Assadollah Assadi, a senior Iranian government official who was convicted in Belgium for planning an attack against Iranian opponents in France.
The Belgian government had negotiated a treaty for the exchange of prisoners, but the Belgian Constitutional Court last month annulled it and halted the exchange of Assadi and Vandecasteele.
The court ruling states that the exchange violated the rights of the victims of Assadi, who had been sentenced to 20 years in prison for preparing together with Iran an attack against a group of opponents who were scheduled to meet in June 2018 in a French city near Paris.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
