Olivier Vandecasteele, a Belgian humanitarian sentenced to 28 years in prison – Liberation
His family learned on Tuesday, during a meeting with members of the Belgian government: Olivier Vandecasteele, a 41-year-old aid worker, was sentenced to 28 years in prison by an Iranian court, without the charges being known. held against him. Arrested in February, he has since been held in solitary confinement in a cell in the sinister prison of Evin in Tehran. He caused a hunger strike a month ago.
Olivier Vandecasteele is an experienced humanitarian. He worked in Afghanistan and Mali for Doctors of the World, before being sent to Iran for the Norwegian Refugee Council and then for Relief International. He had been working there for more than six years when he was arrested. “For 290 days, he has been cut off from all human contact. […] The days pass and our family breaks down. We are sad, devastated, arms and legs severed by this injustice,” said her sister, Nathalie Vandecasteele, last week, denouncing the “unspeakable psychological torture” suffered by his brother, “innocent hostage of a legal-political battle” which met with Iran and Belgium.
A transfer treaty signed in March between the two countries would have freed Olivier Vandecasteele in exchange for the return to Iran of the Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi, sentenced in Belgium to 20 years in prison for a planned attack against a gathering of Iranian opponents in France, in the summer of 2018, aborted by the Belgian police. Considered an Iranian intelligence agent, Assadi was convicted in February 2021 of “terrorist assassination attempts”.
“No Plan B”
Approved at the end of July by the Belgian Parliament, then submitted in mid-November by Iranian President Ebrahim Raïssi, this Belgian-Iranian treaty, sharply criticized by Iranian opponents in exile, was suspended on December 8 by the Belgian Constitutional Court. First step before a possible censorship of the text, on which the Court will have to decide within three months. In her decision, she agreed with the Iranian opponents in exile, believing that this treaty, by allowing the release of a man convicted of acts of terrorism, is for them “a risk of serious and difficult to repair damage”.
“Extremely disappointed” the relatives of Olivier Vandecasteele deplored that this judgment of the Constitutional Court puts “all the scaffolding integrated by the Belgian government has failed”. “There is no plan B, family spokesman Olivier Van Steirtegem said Thursday. You imagine ? If there is no solution, he will stay in prison until 2050, he will be almost 70 years old. The Belgian government has confirmed to the family that the transfer treaty is the only option to release Olivier Vandecasteele.
Belgium is not the only country victim of the “hostage diplomacy” practiced by Iran – but also by Russia, like the American basketball player Brittney Grinerarrested in February in Moscow and traded last week against the Russian arms dealer Victor Bout. Five French nationals are thus detained in Iran, indicated the Quai d’Orsay in mid-October : the Franco-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah, arrested in June 2019 then sentenced to 5 years in prison for “attack on national security”, Benjamin Brierearrested in May 2020 and sentenced to 8 years and 8 months in prison for “spying”, and two trade unionists, Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, arrested in May. The identity of the fifth person remains unknown.