March 1 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo called on Wednesday during a call with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi for the release of Belgian humanitarian worker Olivier Vandecasteele, sentenced to 28 years in prison in Iran.
“My message was very clear: Olivier Vandecasteele is innocent and must be released immediately. In the meantime, his degrading detention conditions must improve,” he said in a message on his official Twitter profile.
The humanitarian worker was arrested in February and accused by the Iranian Justice of espionage in the framework of a trial that was widely questioned by the international community for not respecting his right to defense.
Vandecasteele’s family already denounced in December that he had been in solitary confinement for more than a year and that he suffers from serious health problems. For its part, the Government affirms that a Belgian citizen suffers an “illegal deprivation of liberty”.
Faced with his imprisonment, Brussels works to achieve his release through a prisoner exchange. In fact, the Constitutional Court is expected to rule on the bill promoted by the Executive on the transfer of people convicted of terrorism.
This proposal was the result of a negotiation between Iran and Belgium carried out in 2016 and finally signed by the parties in March 2022, two weeks after the arrest of the humanitarian worker imprisoned in Iran.
The Belgian government defends the move as the only possible way for Vandecasteele to return home in exchange for freeing diplomat Asadolá Asadi, who was sentenced to 20 years by an Antwerp court in 2021 for an assassination attempt and participating in terrorist activities.
