The court in Antwerp, Belgium, on Friday, November 27, began examining a high-profile case involving an Iranian diplomat and three of his alleged accomplices. Arrested in Belgium, France and Germany on June 30 and 1er July 2018, they were indicted for attempted terrorist assassination and preparation of a terrorist offense.
Their target was to be a large meeting of the opposition to the mullahs’ regime on June 30 in Villepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis). A Belgian-Iranian couple, arrested in Brussels the very morning of the meeting, were carrying a sophisticated explosive device: half a kilo of acetone peroxide (TATP) which, commanded from a distance, could have caused considerable damage and killed people. many people, according to experts.
Tens of thousands of participants were expected for the annual meeting of the National Council of Iranian Resistance (NCRI), which since 1981 has united five opposition organizations. It is chaired by Maryam Rajavi, already targeted, in Europe, by other attempted attacks, in 1995 and 2014.
Many personalities were in the front row in Villepinte, and 25 of them became civil parties. Ingrid Betancourt, former senator and candidate for the presidency of Colombia, will address a statement to the court evoking “The cold sweat that [lui] runs back to the idea of ββthe carnage that could have taken place β. Former Democrat elected to the United States Congress, Robert Torricelli confessed that “All [sa] life has been affected β by this murderous project. Other Americans, including Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s current lawyer, were present, as well as the French Yves Bonnet, former boss of the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DST) and Bernard Kouchner, or the former Algerian Prime Minister Sid Ahmed Ghozali. Saudi Prince Turki Faisal Ben Abdelaziz, invited, had declined: he had already received threats from Iran, he later confided.
An operation designed at the highest level in Tehran
The main accused in Antwerp is a diplomat, Assadolah Assadi, third adviser to the Iranian embassy in Vienna at the time of the facts. Sponsor and organizer of the project, he was the one who handed the bomb to Amir Saadouni and his partner, Nasimeh Naami. Both would have worked for ten years for the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). They were in possession of large sums of money, traveled to Iran on various occasions and participated in preparatory meetings in cities in Europe.
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