Iranian diplomat Assadolah Assadi, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for planning a bomb attack in France, has dropped plans to appeal and will serve his sentence, his representative said Wednesday.
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Belgian authorities said they would oppose any potential swap deal with Western prisoners, lawyers said.
Assadi was found guilty of attempted terrorism in February after a foiled plot to bomb an Iranian opposition march in Paris in 2018 organized by the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran.
It was the first time an Iranian official had been tried for suspected terrorism in Europe since the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
"This has been a political trial since the beginning, and he does not want to participate any longer," Assadi's lawyer Dimitri de Beco told reporters in Antwerp, where the envoy was sentenced on Feb. 4. Judges had ruled that diplomatic immunity did not protect Assadi from criminal charges.
In its ruling, the Belgian court said he ran a state intelligence network. Assadi brought explosives with him on a commercial flight to Austria from Iran, it said.
Iran's mission to the EU said in a statement that Belgium had broken international law and that Tehran reserved the right to resort to all legal mechanisms. kjhjkh
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