A Belgian aid worker who was imprisoned in Iran for more than a year has been freed after the Gulf state of Oman said it had facilitated a prisoner swap deal
. The aid worker, Olivier Vandecasteele, is set to arrive in Belgium later Friday, Belgium’s foreign ministry said. Meanwhile, an Iranian diplomat, Assadolah Assadi, was released from Belgium and is on his way back to Iran, the country’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said. Oman said it had brokered the deal: “The Omani efforts have resulted in an agreement between the two sides for a mutual exchange deal,” Oman’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Assadi, who was based in Vienna, was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a Belgian court in 2021 over a foiled terrorist plot outside Paris in 2018. In a judgment in March, the Belgian constitutional court paved the way to Assadi’s release in exchange for Vandecasteele, after rejecting an appeal launched to stop an Iranian-Belgian prisoner exchange treaty. Assadi was detained in 2018 while passing through Germany, according to Iran’s state-run news agency IRNA.
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