Belgian court jails Iran diplomat 20 years for bomb plot
Assadolah Assadi was convicted of being the mastermind behind the 2018 plot
An Iranian diplomat was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday after being convicted by a Belgium court of masterminding a state-sponsored bomb plot against Iranian dissidents in France.
In November, Assadolah Assadi and the three others were charged by Belgian prosecutors in Antwerp with planning an attack on members of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) during a 2018 rally.
Assadi, now 49, was attached to the Iranian mission in Austria when he supplied explosives for the planned attack. He was arrested in Germany, where he did not have diplomatic immunity.
The three accomplices, dual Iranian-Belgians, were given jail terms of between 15 and 18 years and stripped of their Belgian citizenship.
The keynote speaker at the NCRI rally was then-US President Donald Trump, according to Saudi-backed outlet Al Arabia.