Struan Stevenson, former Member of the European Parliament for Scotland 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.
Struan Stevenson, former Member of the European Parliament for Scotland
When a Middle Eastern country orders one of its diplomats to bomb an opposition rally in Europe, prepares the lethal device, sends them to the EU on a commercial airliner with the bomb in his diplomatic bag, what should the West do? This is not some sort of Hollywood fantasy.
This is reality. This really happened. Now, we’ve just heard this sentence passed by a Belgian court on Asadollah Asadi, the Iranian diplomat and his four Iranian co-conspirators who were involved in the plot to kill and maim hundreds at a mass rally of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the NCRI, attended by tens of thousands of people at Villepinte, near Paris, in June 2018. I was there.
All four have received long jail terms for terrorism. I was a plaintiff at a trial, along with many other supporters of the PMOI/MEK.
Today’s current ruling is a great victory for the NCRI and its charismatic leader, the president-elect Mrs. Maryam Rajavi. It’s also a great victory for the PMOI/MEK and their frontline team in Ashraf 3.
The court’s verdict will be of enormous significance and a huge morale booster for the courageous resistance units floating around who can now see the tyrannical mullah’s regime exposed and held to account in the European Court of Justice.
The clerical regime has a history of deploying its assassins in the guise of diplomats and using their embassies around the world as bomb factories. Since seizing power in the 1979 Revolution, the Shia country regime, whose main contribution to the world has been Islamic fundamentalism, has ruthlessly bombed and shot its opponents around the globe while torturing and executing political prisoners at home, but this is the first time a diplomat has been caught red handed and jailed for acts of terror.
It must surely mark a turning point in relations with the mullah’s regime. There can be no return to business as usual. There can be no more arguments that diplomacy is the answer.
The arch criminal and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, together with the senior ministers like President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, and the Minister of Intelligence Mohamad Alavi ordered the spying, ordered the bomb plots, and ordered their assassinations.
They must be held to account. It’s time for a complete change of direction in US, EU, and UN policy towards Iran. The people of Iran expect the West to be on their side. They expect their calls for democracy to be taken seriously.
Human rights and women’s rights cannot be compromised or marginalized on the pretext of political considerations, trade deals, or particularly the flawed nuclear deal. The appeasement policy lamely followed by the EU and its top diplomat Joseph Burrell is dead in the water. It’s high time the West realized that the peace they have bought with appeasement is only temporary and the price they have paid has been freedom and democracy for the people of Iran.
Now, following the enter trial, the EU will have to reassess completely its relationship with the criminal mullah’s regime. The verdict in Antwerp today proves what we have known all along.
The Iranian people have been governed by gangsters who will not hesitate to assassinate, bomb, maim, torture, and kill their opponents at home and abroad.
The only way to restore peace, justice, democracy, and freedom to the people of Iran, to the Middle East, and to the world is to remove them from power and indict them for crimes against humanity in the International Courts of Justice.
It’s for this objective that I support the main opposition movement, the PMOI/MEK and their brave supporters in Ashraf 3 and across all of Iran. Today’s victory is only the start. The mullahs are finished.
