Belgian held in Iran for ‘espionage’

BRUSSELS — Iran has been holding a Belgian man for the past four months under trumped-up “espionage” charges, Belgium’s justice minister said Tuesday, as his country weighed a controversial prisoner swap treaty with Tehran.

The Belgian, a humanitarian aid worker, was seized in Iran on February 24 and has been in “illegal” detention since, the minister, Vincent Van Quickenborne, told MPs.

MPs and the Belgian man’s family identified him as Olivier Vandecasteele, 41. 

A relative told AFP that Vandecasteele had lived in Iran from 2015, when he worked for the Norwegian Refugee Council and then another NGO, Relief International, before returning to Belgium last year after a contract was ended. 

He returned to Tehran under a tourist visa in February, was seized several days later and taken to Iran’s infamous Evin prison, where he was being held in solitary confinement.

Quickenborne said officials from Belgium’s embassy in Tehran had twice visited the jailed Belgian to give all possible assistance.

Rights groups and media outlets covering Iran said it appeared to be another case of Tehran grabbing hostages to exchange for Iranians incarcerated in the West. 

Several are held in Evin, in a wing run by the intelligence service of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Among them is a Swedish academic who also holds Iranian citizenship, Ahmadreza Djalali, who taught at a Brussels university. Iran also applied “espionage” charges to Djalali and has sentenced him to death.

Belgium last year convicted and imprisoned an Iranian diplomat for 20 years for plotting a bomb attack outside Paris in 2018.

Belgium’s parliament on Thursday is to vote on whether to ratify a bilateral treaty with Iran that would open the way for prisoners in each country to be repatriated.

Quickenborne on Tuesday said as he presented the proposed treaty to MPs for debate that “if the bill is not fully approved, the threat to our Belgian interests and certain Belgian citizens will increase”.

Some US lawmakers, however, are pressing Belgium to ditch the proposed treaty, which was signed in March.