2023-05-26 13:37:58
Belgian humanitarian Olivier Vandecasteele, detained in Iran for 455 days, was released after an exchange of prisoners between Brussels and Tehran facilitated by Oman, and is expected Friday evening May 26 in Belgium.
” Finally free ! »said Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, without referring to the exchange of detainees. “As I speak to you, Olivier Vandecasteele is on his way to Belgium. If all goes as planned, he will be with us tonight.”he added.
For its part, the Sultanate of Oman, mediator between Tehran and Western countries, indicated that the humanitarian had been released within the framework of a “mutual exchange” of two detainees between Iran and Belgium. The two ex-convicts “were transported from Tehran and Brussels to Muscat today (Friday) for their return to their respective countries”said the sultanate.
Treaty of Mutual Transfer of Convicts
According to Iranian state television, it is the diplomat Assadollah Asadi, sentenced in Antwerp in 2021 to twenty years in prison for a planned attack which was to target a rally of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI, coalition of opponents) in 2018 in France.
At the end of April, Belgium indicated « examiner » Tehran’s request for the transfer of Assadollah Assadi, a condition for the release of Olivier Vandecasteel. A treaty for the mutual transfer of convicts signed in 2022 between Belgium and Iran and which entered into force on April 18, 2023 paved the way for this exchange. Iran had welcomed the adoption of this agreement and hinted that the transfer was going to happen.
Members of the Iranian opposition in exile tried to oppose this exchange, without success. In their eyes, the release of Assadollah Assadi would amount to encouraging the “state terrorism” practiced by Iran.
35 Europeans detained in Iran
Dozens of Westerners are detained in Iran, described by their supporters as innocent people used by Tehran as leverage and bargaining chip. Arrested on February 24, 2022 in Tehran, Olivier Vandecasteele, 42, had been sentenced for ” spying “. According to Belgium, he was at the heart of” blackmail “and treated “inhumanly”.
Olivier Vandecasteele’s family had denounced the ill-treatment inflicted on him. His conditions of detention fall under “the torture”accused Alexander de Croo at the end of April before the Chamber of Deputies. “He sleeps and eats on the floor, does not have sufficient access to medical care (…), the light never goes out in his cell”he detailed.
The release of Olivier Vandecasteele comes two weeks after those of two French nationals, Benjamin Brière, 37, incarcerated for three years in Mashhad prison in northeastern Iran, and the Franco-Irish Bernard Phelan, 64 years, who had spent seven months in detention. Thirty-five nationals of a dozen EU member states, including four French, are still detained in Iran, according to the head of French diplomacy Catherine Colonna.
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