We must express our outrage at the decision of your government to allow an exchange of prisoners with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Your government has capitulated to this scandalous blackmail and has done so in open defiance of your own Constitutional Court who clearly stated that the victims of Assadi’s attempted act of terrorism on European soil should be informed before any such prisoner transfer could take place.
Mr. Alexander De Croo,
Office of the Prime Minister of Belgium
Rue de la Loi 16
BE-1000 Brussels
Belgium
cc President Charles Michel
May 26, 2023
Dear Prime Minister,
We write to you on behalf of the International Committee ‘In Search of Justice’ (ISJ), a non-profit NGO registered in Brussels. Our members include many elected parliamentarians, former officials and other dignitaries, with an interest to promote human rights, freedom, democracy, peace and stability in Iran.
As such, we must express our outrage at the decision of your government to allow an exchange of prisoners with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has led to the repatriation of the convicted terrorist Assadollah Assadi, a registered Iranian diplomat. This decision is particularly disgraceful given the recent release of masses of documents hacked from the Iranian regime’s ministry of foreign affairs. The leaked foreign ministry files show how the regime went into overdrive to secure Assadi’s release, claiming diplomatic immunity and when that failed, used this tactic to negotiate a prisoner exchange with Belgium, taking a Belgian charity worker hostage in Iran, accusing him of spying and sentencing him to 40 years imprisonment and 74 lashes. The documents illuminate how Tehran used this tactic to try to negotiate a prisoner exchange with Belgium.
The fact that your government has capitulated to this scandalous blackmail and has done so in open defiance of your own Constitutional Court, who clearly stated in its judgement that the victims of Assadi’s attempted act of terrorism on European soil should be informed before any such prisoner transfer could take place, must surely rank as one of the most reprehensible and egregious acts of appeasement of any government since the days of WWII.
Prime Minister, you and your government have undermined the rule of law in the EU. Your act will have emboldened the mullahs’ regime to perpetrate further acts of terror in the EU in the knowledge that they can ensure the release of their terrorists by the simple expedient of taking hostages and committing criminal blackmail. The ISJ condemns your government’s action in the strongest possible terms and holds you personally to account for any future deaths and wounding of EU citizens resulting from acts of terror by the Iranian regime and its cohorts on European soil.
Sincerely,
ALEJO VIDAL-QUADRAS
President ISJ
Spanish professor of atomic and nuclear physics. Vice-president of the European Parliament (1999-
2014).
STRUAN STEVENSON
Chair ISJ Committee on the Protection of Political Freedoms in Iran
President of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-14) and chairman of
Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (2004-14)
PAULO CASACA
Member of the European Parliament (1999-2009) Chair of European Parliament’s delegation for relations with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Founder and executive director of the “South Asia Democratic Forum”; founder of the international co-operation association ARCHumankind, ‘Alliance to Renew Cooperation among Humankind’.