John Baird, former Foreign Minister of Canada addressed an online global conference on the conviction of Iran’s diplomat-terrorist Assadollah Assadi by a Belgian court for attempting to bomb the 2018 Free Iran gathering in Paris.
On February 4, 2021, simultaneous with the court ruling against the Iranian regime’s diplomat-terrorist, Assadollah Assadi, and his accomplices in Antwerp, Belgium, a global online conference was held, where Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), and dozens of prominent figures from various European countries, the United States and Canada, joined thousands of Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK/PMOI) members based in Ashraf-3 (Albania) as well as the supporters of the Iranian Resistance worldwide.
The Belgian court rejected Assadollah Assadi’s claim of diplomatic immunity and sentenced him to 20 years in prison. The three intelligence agents, Nasimeh Naami, Mehrdad Arefani, and Amir Saadouni, were sentenced to 18, 17, and 15 years in prison, respectively. Their Belgian citizenships was also revoked.
John Baird, former Foreign Minister of Canada
For more than 40 years now, the Iranian regime in Tehran has been supporting state sponsored terrorism right around the world. They focused on the Middle East, they focused on the regime’s enemies, and they focused on innocent civilians.
Another big example of this happened on June the 30th 2018, when the National Council of Resistance of Iran was having their annual gathering outside of Paris, France.
Tens and tens and tens of thousands of people attended the call for regime change to support the NCRI and to lend their support to the group’s leader Maryam Rajavi.
After the event, it was discovered when an Iranian regime diplomat was arrested in Belgium that the Iranian regime including Hassan Rouhani, the president of the regime, were targeting the gathering, targeting the NCRI, targeting civilians, and most importantly, targeting Maryam Rajavi.
Their goal was simple, to cause as much death and casualties by terrorist means to financing and to direct support. The most disturbing part of this is that an Iranian regime, an accredited diplomat, representing the regime with a diplomatic passport, has been charged with the attempted attack.
The evidence collected by the Belgian authorities, put on the trial last November December, is strong. It’s clear. It’s undeniable. We will soon learn whether the accused terrorist and his three co-conspirators will be convicted.
We believe that the evidence is undeniable, and we hope that there’ll be justice for the NCRI, justice for Madame Rajavi, and justice for everyone who was at that event. What makes this personal for me is I was there with supporters or people wanting to overthrow the regime.
I was there to speak out against state sponsored terrorism, to speak out against the atrocities and terrible human rights abuses that have escalated under Rouhani, and to speak out against the terrible human rights record on the ground in all regions of Iran.
So for me, it’s personal. And let’s hope that we get justice today for the attempted terrorist attack, that we get justice today for the attempted murder of what would have been hundreds, if not thousands or even tens of thousands of people.
Let’s recommit ourselves to work with all aspects of Iranian society, for the student groups, unions, other opposition groups, the NCRI, that we stand up against this regime and that a better day comes for the Iranian people.
