Belgium Requests Iran To Return Its Jailed Aid Worker
Belgium’s government has made a formal request to Iran for the return of a jailed aid worker after the signing of a controversial prisoner exchange treaty.
Belgium’s government has made a formal request to Iran for the return of a jailed aid worker after the signing of a controversial prisoner exchange treaty.
Olivier Vandecasteele has been held in the Islamic Republic since last year on spurious charges of “spying and cooperation with the United States, money laundering and smuggling $500,000 out of Iran.”
An Iranian court sentenced the humanitarian worker to 40 years in prison and 74 lashes, it was announced in January.
Vandecasteele, 41, has been employed by Médecins du Monde, Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), and Relief International. He worked for humanitarian organizations in Iran for more than six years before leaving the country, but was lured back by “a girlfriend” and was detained in February 2022.
He has been subject to torture, according to Amnesty International, and is being held in solitary confinement in a windowless basement cell without access to adequate healthcare and fresh air.
Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib confirmed on Tuesday that she had notified her Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian of the transfer request.
In a social media post, she said: "I condemned his detention conditions and requested a visit by our ambassador to Iran."
A swap is being discussed between Brussels and Iran for Iranian official Assadollah Assadi, jailed in Belgium for masterminding a plot to bomb an Iranian opposition event near Paris in 2018.
In response to a legal challenge by an Iranian opposition group, the potential prisoner exchange was held up for months.
Belgium's Constitutional Court rejected a request to annul the prisoner exchange treaty with the Islamic Republic in March.
In a Tuesday statement, the response group -- which represents Canada, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine – said, “The sham trials that took place in Tehran must not distract the world from Iran’s failure to meet its international obligations and take responsibility for its actions.”
On Sunday, a court in Iran issued sentences for 10 low-ranking military personnel in connection with the incident, sentencing a commander to 10 years in prison, while nine others were sentenced to between one and three years. The names of none of the senior military and government officials could be seen in the list, while families of victims demand to know which senior officers issued the order to fire at the plane.
In the statement, the response group said that the Islamic Republic “callously shot down Flight PS752 over Tehran," denouncing the verdicts in the criminal trials against the alleged perpetrators.
“Neither the trials nor the verdicts announced this week brings truth or justice to the families of the victims, as the entire process—starting with Iran’s biased investigation into the downing—lacked the necessary impartiality and transparency,” read the statement.
Flight PS752 of the Ukrainian International Airlines was shot down by two air-defense missiles fired by the IRGC as it took off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport on January 8, 2020. Hours earlier, the IRGC had fired more than a dozen missiles at Iraqi bases hosting US troops in retaliation for the killing of its Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in a US airstrike in Baghdad just five days earlier.
All 176 passengers and crew, including 63 Canadians as well as 82 Iranian citizens died in the disaster.
Iran first tried to deny it had shot down the plane, but when video evidence emerged, it acknowledged the incident but attributed it to human error. However, it never allowed an independent investigation and did not explain why the order was issued to shoot at a plane taking off from Tehran, or if Iran was concerned about a US retaliation, why it did not close its airspace following the attack on US bases in Iraq.
On December 28, 2022, the Coordination Group urged Iran to agree to arbitration as Tehran stonewalled over an independent investigation and proper compensation.
The statement Tuesday added, “The families of the 176 innocent victims are still waiting for the justice they deserve. We continue to stand in solidarity with the families and loved ones of the victims of the downing of Flight PS752 and will not rest until justice has been served.”
On Monday, head of the Judiciary Organization of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic, Ali Eftekhari, made paradoxical remarks about the case. Claiming that "the air defense system of the country was not defective" at the night of the accident, he said that "it was not possible to determine whether it was a passenger plane or a missile in the radar system at night."
Although it is common knowledge that radar is a radiolocation system that uses radio waves to detect and track objects and there is no difference in their performance between night and day. In addition, speed and trajectory of an object should clearly distinguish between a missile and a passenger plane.
Eftekhari also claimed that the IRGC did not shoot a second rocket at the plane, despite videos of the night of the incident clearly showing the second projectile.
Following the trials, families of the victims are outragedby light sentences issued for a few low-ranking military men.
Responding to the criticism about the light sentences for the alleged culprits in comparison to the harsh sentences for antigovernment protesters, Eftekhari said that those who go to the streets seek to "disrupt security" and "must" be punished but the operator behind the attack on the passenger plane meant to preserve the country’s security.
The sorrow state of Iran’s economy has put the conservative-hardliner forces in charge of both the parliament and the president on the back foot prior to parliamentary election next March.
Conservative politician Hossein Kanaani Moghaddam believes that parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and his allies will be among the most serious contestants within the conservative camp in the next election.
Asked how he would describe the configuration of conservative parties in the competition now that there is an all conservative government in Iran, Moghaddam said: The competition dates back to the fundamental difference in Iran's conservative camp between an "Islamic Republic" and an "Islamic government." He said each one of those ideas have their own supporters among conservatives. However, he said that without an Islamic Republic, it is impossible to create an Islamic government.
The Islamic Republic, as it exists and operates today, is based on the idea of the people's rule. However, in practice the Supreme Leader has absolute power. The interventions by Ali Khamenei and his Guardian Council and other centers of power under his control have left very little of the regime's democratic façade.
The idea of Islamic government, on the other hand, which was outlined by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini the founder of the Islamic regime in Iran, is based on the idea of the holy Koran being the Constitutional Law of the government. When he came to power, Khomeini spoke very little about his book, The Islamic Government, in which Shiite clerics rather than the members of the parliament should make key decisions.
Moghaddam said that a part of the conservative camp in Iran believes in establishing an Islamic government albeit based on their own definition and interests. Another part, he said, maintain that an Islamic government is impossible without an Islamic Republic. In other words, the two groups differ on the role of the people in the government.
In Iran, the late founding father of the ultraconservative Paydari party, Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi said on many occasions that the people should have no part in the government and it is God who appoints the country's leaders. He even insisted that the leader's aides are also chosen by God rather than the people.
Moghaddam said that the Paydari Party is following the idea of establishing an Islamic government. He added that the two opposing conservative groups need to come to some sort of accord, otherwise, none of them can survive in Iran's political landscape. He also maintained that prejudiced support for the idea of Islamic government can deter the people and put an end to their support for the government.
Moghaddam himself is one those who believes in the Islamic Republic rather than an Islamic government. By warning about loss of popular support, he distanced himself from Paydari party which holds the majority both in the Majles and in Raisi's government. He further stressed that "talking about an Islamic government in Iran would be a mistake."
Asked how the two conservative groups can resolve this dichotomy, Kanani Moghaddam said: "They need to follow the Supreme Leader, otherwise, insisting on one of the two ideas will intensify factional infighting."
Regarding the status of Ghalibaf's "neo-con" group, he said that it is also one group among many other conservatives including traditional conservatives, moderate conservatives, conservative critics of the government, revolutionary groups and several conservative coalitions.
That degree of diversity among conservatives is healthy, but if their competition leads to conflicts and confrontations, then none of them can claim to represent the conservatives.
“Is this Islamic justice? A trash bin was burned [during protests], and a young man was executed [for that]. By deliberate shooting of two missiles 176 individuals and an unborn baby were killed and it resulted in thirteen years of prison for someone whose role in this case is not clear,” Beheshteh Rezapour who lost her 33-year-old daughter, in the tragic incident said in an interview with Iran International TV.
“So, commanders, those who issued the order, where do they stand in this case?” she added.
Mehrdad Zarei whose eighteen-year-old son Arad died in the incident in a video released on social media accused Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, IRGC Commander Hossein Salami, Amirali Hajizadeh, the head of the IRGC aerospace force, Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and other military and government officials of responsibility for the downing and said they should be put on trial by an independent international tribunal or “after Iran's freedom”.
Some journalists and activists have also criticized the court process and the ruling.
Political activist Abdollah Momeni in a tweet pointed out that activist Mehdi Mahmoudian and women's rights activist Bahareh Hedayat are currently serving the same sentence as the unnamed top defendant in the Ukrainian flight case, only for lighting candles at a rally to honor the memory of the victims of the incident. “This is exactly what judicial justice is in the Islamic Republic!”
“Those who were killed in the shooting down of the Ukrainian plane had names and identities, but the names and identities of the defendants supposedly put on trial was not announced…When a crime is public nobody will believe a trial that is secretive,” Mohammad-Javad Akbarin, a Muslim scholar and former cleric tweeted.
The Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims has also criticized the ruling and said the case will remain open with the people. According to the Association, more than 70 complainants from the families of victims withdrew their complaints prior to the announcement of the ruling and refuted the court’s competence to prosecute the crime.
“The governments of the four other affected countries are not absolved of their responsibility to seek justice for their citizens,” the association said in a statement Monday. The group demanded the referral of the dispute to the International Court of Justice immediately after the end of the arbitration period, on June 28, 2023 as well as listing the IRGC as a terrorist entity.
More than three years after the incident, Iran's judiciary on Sunday sentenced the unnamed commander of the IRGC’s Tor-M1 surface-to-air missile system that shot down the plane to 13 years, of which he will be required to serve 10 years including the time he has already spent in prison. Nine others were also sentenced from one to two years.
Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson, Nasser Kanaani, on Monday insisted that Iran has carried out all its duties regarding the case “in accordance with the Chicago Convention” and its own laws and regulations, adding that families of the victims will be paid compensation.
According to Kanaani, there were 117 plaintiffs in the case who were represented by 20 lawyers during the trial. Defendants can appeal the ruling within twenty days from the time of being notified of the ruling, he said.