Iran has released Belgian humanitarian activist Olivier Vandecastelle, who has been detained in Iran for more than a year, Belgian Prime Minister Alexandre de Crew said in a statement on Friday.
De Crew said, “Olivier Vandecastel is on his way to Belgium.”; “If everything goes according to plan, he’ll be with us tonight.”
A Belgian official confirmed to POLITICO that the man was on his way to Iran as part of a prisoner exchange.
According to Belgian public broadcaster RTBFThe person in question is an Iranian diplomat, Assadullah Asadi, who in 2021 was sentenced by an Antwerp court to 20 years in prison for plotting a bomb attack against a rally organized by Iranian dissidents near Paris.
This is a developing story.