Three European nationals - a Dane and two Iranian-Austrians - detained in Iran arrived in Belgium on the night of Friday June 2 to Saturday June 3, after their release.
Transported in a medical plane which made a stopover in the early evening in Muscat in the Sultanate of Oman, they arrived shortly before 2:45 a.m. on Saturday at the military airport of Melsbroek, near Brussels, Belgium having negotiated their release. They were welcomed by Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib, accompanied by Danish and Austrian diplomats.
In a tweet, Ms Lahbib said she spoke with her Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, to express Belgium's "satisfaction" after "the implementation of the agreement reached".
In the afternoon, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo announced the evacuation "via Oman to Belgium" of three Europeans "unjustly detained" in Iran. This concerns two Iranian-Austrians arrested in January 2016 and January 2019, and a Dane who was arrested in November 2022 "on the sidelines of rallies for women's rights", according to the Belgian government.
"A Diplomatic Marathon"
The head of Danish diplomacy, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, welcomed this release, praising in particular "the immense effort" of Belgium, but gave no details on his national.
Unlike its Austrian counterpart. "I am relieved that we can finally bring Kamran Ghaderi and Massud Mossaheb home after years of difficult detention in Iran," commented Alexander Schallenberg. The Austrian Foreign Minister clarified that MM. Ghaderi and Mossaheb, "eagerly awaited" by their families, spent "2,709 and 1,586 days in detention in Iran, respectively". "It was a diplomatic marathon that finally paid off," Schallenberg said.
Mr. Ghaderi is an Iranian-Austrian businessman who was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2016 for working with states hostile to Tehran. Mr. Mossaheb spent almost four years in detention before being released in November 2022 on medical grounds. But he was previously forbidden to leave Iran. Suffering, this septuagenarian got out of the plane in Melsbroek leaning on crutches.
Operation "Blackstone"
The Sultanate of Oman, unanimously thanked by Brussels, Copenhagen and Vienna, had already acted as a facilitator and transit country on May 26 when the Belgian humanitarian Olivier Vandecasteele was released.
The return of Mr. Vandecasteele, after 455 days of detention, and after a standoff with Brussels which put the Belgian executive to the test, was obtained in exchange for the release of Assadollah Assadi. This Iranian diplomat, then stationed in Vienna, had been arrested on July 1, 2018 in Germany, suspected of having orchestrated a planned attack which was to target the day before a rally of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI, coalition of opponents) in France. He was then sentenced to twenty years in prison for terrorism in 2021 in Belgium.
The NCRI sees Mr. Assadi as the epitome of "state terrorism" practiced by Tehran, and has slammed his release for flouting the rule of law. Last Friday, Assadollah Assadi, whom the Belgian justice considered an Iranian intelligence agent, was greeted when he got off the plane in Tehran with gifts and a necklace of flowers by two senior government officials.
Deciphering the return of other three European nationals, after that of Mr. Vandecasteele, senior Belgian officials presented it as "the second phase" of the operation negotiated with Iran to deliver Mr. Assadi. This operation was dubbed "Blackstone" after an 18th-century English jurist who once said, "Ten guilty people are better off than one innocent man in pain."
Between twenty and thirty Europeans still detained in Iran
Westerners imprisoned in Iran are generally portrayed by their supporters as innocent people used by Tehran as leverage and bargaining chip.
After the release last month of French Benjamin Brière and Franco-Irish Bernard Phelan, there are still four French detainees in Iran. And in total between twenty and thirty nationals of member countries of the European Union (EU), according to the sources, are in the same situation. The Belgian authorities advanced Friday the figure of twenty-two. Vienna still deplores the presence in Iranian jails of a third Austrian detained for undetermined reasons.
