Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said in a statement that the aid worker, Olivier Vandecasteele, had been freed and said that for him, “the choice was always clear: Olivier’s life was always the most important.”

 

An exiled Iranian opposition group has accused Belgium of paying a “shameful” ransom for hostage-taking after Iran freed Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele in exchange for an Iranian diplomat convicted by a Belgian court of terrorism.

“The release of the terrorist is a shameful ransom to terrorism and hostage-taking. This will embolden the religious fascism ruling Iran to continue its crimes,” Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said in a statement.

Assadollah Assadi was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Belgium over a 2018 plot to bomb a rally of the Iranian opposition rally near Paris. He flew back to Iran after the prisoner exchange which was brokered by Oman.  Belgian intelligence identified Assadi as an officer of Iran’s intelligence and security ministry who operated undercover at the Iranian embassy in Vienna.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said in a statement that the aid worker, Olivier Vandecasteele, had been freed and said that for him, “the choice was always clear: Olivier’s life was always the most important.”

He said Vandecasteele had been unjustly held in Iran for 455 days and added that “in Belgium, we abandon no one. Not least someone who is innocent,” whatever the legal and diplomatic consequences.

Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne said he would do it again, anytime. “There is a moral compass. If you have the choice between freeing someone innocent or keeping one, or 10 guilty in prison, then you always have to choose the fate of the innocent,” he told the Flemish public television VRT.

He compared the exchange to last December’s U.S.-Russian prisoner swap between WNBA basketball star Brittney Griner and Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout following her trial and conviction on drug possession charges in Moscow.

In January, Iran sentenced Vandecasteele to a lengthy prison term and 74 lashes after convicting him of espionage in a closed-door trial. Vandecasteele was arrested in Iran in February 2022 while packing up his belongings, after working fors ix years with the Norwegian Refugee Council and Relief International in the Islamic Republic.

His family and the Belgian government strongly denied Iran’s claims, made without offering evidence, that he was a spy.