More than a thousand people gathered in Brussels this Sunday to demand the release of a Belgian aid worker detained for nearly a year in Iran and recently sentenced to 40 years in prison and 74 lashes.
The protest for the release of Olivier Vandecasteele, called by the human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) and a workers’ support commission, took place in a square in the center of the Belgian capital.
Speaking to RTL television, AI Belgium spokesman Ludovic Laus said the initiative was aimed at putting pressure on the Belgian authorities to “use all means to obtain the release” of Olivier Vandecasteele, detained since February 2022. in Iran under conditions that ” amount to torture and ill – treatment ” .
During the demonstration, which, according to the newspaper Le Soir, had 1,200 participants, several relatives and friends of Vandecasteele, humanitarian workers and AI representatives spoke.
Today’s protest follows the one that took place ten days ago in the city of Tournai, where Olivier Vandecasteele is from, and which brought together hundreds of people.
Tehran accuses Vandecasteele of spying and cooperating with the United States after working for six years in Iran for international non-governmental organizations.
The head of Belgian diplomacy, Hadja Lahbib, who considered the detention of the aid worker arbitrary, quoted the Iranian ambassador in Brussels and assured that Iran did not provide official information about the charges against Vandecasteele and his sentence.
Olivier Vandecasteele’s future seems to be linked to that of Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi, who is serving 21 years in prison in Belgium for terrorism, for having participated in the 2018 attempted attack on a meeting of opponents of the Iranian regime in Paris, France. .
Belgium and Iran signed a treaty to allow the exchange of convicted persons, but in December the Belgian Constitutional Court suspended its application pending a ruling on the appeal filed by Iranian opposition organizations against the agreement.
Source: TSF
