The Belgian court also convicted three accomplices of Mr. Assadi, all with dual citizenship from Iran and Belgium, who received prison sentences of 15 to 18 years and lost their Belgian citizenship. The three are considered agents of the Iranian intelligence ministry, prosecutors said.
The head of Belgium’s State Security Service, Jaak Raes, said in a letter to prosecutors that intelligence officials determined that the bombing plan was a state-sanctioned operation, approved by Tehran.
An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman condemned the verdict, classifying Assadi’s arrest and sentence as illegal under international law. “Iran reserves the right to use legal and diplomatic means to realize the rights of Assadollah Assadi and hold governments accountable for violating their international obligations,” said spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh, according to the semi-official news agency Fars. .
Mr. Assadi was assigned to the Iranian mission in Austria when he provided explosives for the planned attack. Prosecutors said he brought about a pound of the explosive triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, and a detonator from Iran to Vienna in his luggage and then drove to Luxembourg. There, he delivered it on June 30, 2018, to an Iranian-Belgian couple in a Pizza Hut. Assadi was arrested at a gas station in Germany, where he had no diplomatic immunity, while returning to Austria.
The couple, Amir Saadouni, 40, and his wife, Nassimeh Naami, 36, had received political asylum and later citizenship in Belgium. They were arrested while driving from Antwerp to Paris on the day of the rally. The fourth defendant, Mehrdad Arefani, 57, was an associate of Mr. Assadi who was to guide the couple at the rally.
Iran has been accused in the past of trying to eliminate opponents abroad. Denmark called for sanctions against Iran for planning another assassination there in 2018.
Assadi was in contact with Iranian agents across Europe, according to documents provided to Belgian prosecutors by the police in Germany and the Netherlands, according to Belgium’s Flemish broadcaster, VRT. The documents include a notebook found in his car containing numerous receipts of payments to people identified only by pseudonyms.