Iranian diplomat Assadolah Assadi and three other people were due to go on trial in Belgium on Friday for allegedly planning a terrorist attack that would have targeted an Iranian opposition march in Paris in 2018 organized by the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

An Iranian-Belgian couple, Amir Saadouni and Nasimeh Naami, were arrested and found to be in possession of half a kilogram (approximately one pound) of explosives. Another suspect, poet Mehrdad Arefani, who has lived in Belgium for over a decade, was arrested in France in 2018 on a European warrant.

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On June 30, 2018, Belgian police officers tipped off about a possible attack against the annual meeting of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, stopped the couple's Mercedes car. In their luggage, they found 550 grams of the unstable TATP explosive and a detonator. In its report, Belgium's bomb disposal unit said the device was of professional quality.

TATP has been used in several attacks in Europe in recent years, including in 2016 when suicide bombers killed 32 people on the Brussels subway and at an airport. It could have caused a sizable explosion and panic in the crowd, estimated at 25,000 people, that had gathered that day in the French town of Villepinte, north of Paris.

Assadi, who had been posted in Vienna, was captured in Germany, where he did not have diplomatic immunity.

According to legal documents from the two-year investigation obtained by The Associated Press, Belgium's intelligence and security agency (VSSE) says Assadi operated on orders from Iran's authorities and brought the explosives to Europe himself.

The French government claimed that Iran's intelligence service was behind the planned attack. All four suspects were charged with planning a terrorist attack and membership in a terrorist organization. If they are found guilty, they could face life sentences.

Tehran has repeatedly dismissed the charges, calling the attack allegations a "false flag" stunt by the NCRI, which it considers a terrorist group.

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Chanting "mullahs are terrorists," some two dozen supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) called on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government "with utmost urgency" to apply pressure on Tehran.

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NCRI spokesman Javad Dabiran told Reuters Television that there was "an alternative" to the current Iranian government, naming his organization and the People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI) – also known as the Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO) – the main faction within the exiled opposition umbrella organization, the NCRI.

Video: Reuters

On Sunday, protests erupted across Iran for a second day, increasing pressure on the Islamic Republic's leadership after it admitted its military shot down a Ukrainian airliner by accident, despite days of denials that Iranian forces were to blame.

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