MKO’s Call for Belgium to Keep Iranian Diplomat Went Unheeded: Source
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The Belgian government has given the cold shoulder to the ringleader of the terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) who had asked Brussels to refrain from releasing Iranian diplomat Asadollah Asadi, an informed source said.
Iranian diplomat Asadollah Asadi, who had been jailed by Belgium for five years, was released and returned home on Friday following intensive diplomatic negotiations during a prisoner swap between Tehran and Brussels, mediated by Oman.
Tehran said Asadi had been held hostage in Germany on June 30, 2018, in a plot hatched by the Zionist regime and carried out by a number of European security services.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman said certain European governments, which fell under the influence of the Zionist regime and the terrorist MKO, violated their international commitments after the “arbitrary arrest” of the Iranian diplomat and sentenced him to 20 years in prison in a “theatrical and totally political” court.
An informed source told Tasnim that Maryam Rajavi, the notorious ringleader of the MKO terrorist cult, had made every effort to obstruct the release of Asadi.
The source said Rajavi had even taken a trip to Belgium 48 hours before the prisoner swap and asked Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib to halt the negotiations with Iran.
The MKO ringleader had employed all of her capacities and links to stop the release of the Iranian diplomat, the source added, noting that Rajavi was given a “negative response” after passing on several messages to the foreign minister of Belgium.
The infamous MKO ringleader had even held meetings with a number of Belgian parliamentarians to ask them to put effort into aborting the talks between Brussels and Tehran about the release of Asadi, the source stated.
Rajavi had reportedly made it clear to a Western diplomat that the release of Asadi would frustrate the anti-Iranian opposition.
In June 2018, Belgian authorities said that the Belgian police had intercepted a car carrying homemade explosives and a detonation device, claiming that Asadi had handed the materials to two people in Belgium earlier. Asadi, himself, was apprehended in Germany the next day and told that he could not apply his diplomatic immunity.
A Belgian court then sentenced the diplomat, who served as the third counselor at Iran's Embassy in Vienna, to 20 years in prison after accusing him of plotting an alleged attack against the anti-Iran terrorist MKO cult.
