Kenn Blackwell, Originally Published in The Hill, July 7, 2022
The full Belgian parliament is expected to soon vote on a treaty that was signed in March between the governments of Belgium and Iran. The Foreign Relations Committee of Belgium’s lower house approved the measure this week. If ratified, the treaty would allow for persons convicted of a crime in one country to serve out their sentences in the county where they hold primary citizenship. There is no doubt that it has been written to set the stage for a prisoner swap involving the Iranian terrorist Assadollah Assadi, and perhaps also his co-conspirators in the plot to bomb the 2018 gathering of Iranian expatriates organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
Assadi held a position of high rank in the Iranian regime’s embassy in Vienna when he used his diplomatic status to evade normal security screenings and smuggle an explosive device from Iran to Europe on a commercial flight.
Attendance at that rally was estimated at around 100,000. As we have on many occasions, dozens of political dignitaries traveled to the venue just outside of Paris, to hear the keynote address by NCRI leader Maryam Rajavi and to deliver our own speeches in support of her vision for a free, democratic future for the Iranian people. I can attest to the devastation that no doubt would have been caused by the explosion had Assadi’s plot not been thwarted by European law enforcement. READ MORE…