![\"iranians-belgium-treaty-canadian\"](\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/iranians-belgium-treaty-canadian.jpg\" "\\"iranians-belgium-treaty-canadian\\"")
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July 4, 2022<\/p>\n
Statement <\/strong><\/p>\n The Canadian Friends of a Democratic Iran (CFDI), a non-partisan NGO that has followed the situation of human rights and Iranian dissidents for several years, is in shock and disbelief in learning of the deal between the Belgian government and the clerical regime in Iran to release convicted terrorists back to Iran.<\/p>\n Over the past several years, the issue of impunity and the need to combat it has gained unprecedented support within Canada and internationally.\u00a0 This treaty not only undermines that, but it will encourage state-sponsored terrorism, of which the clerical regime in Iran is known as a world leader.<\/p>\n Signatories of this letter, co-chairs of the CFDI, and our late founding co-chair, Hon. David Kilgour, were present in the 2018 rally in Villepinte near Paris, which Assadi and his three Iranian co-conspirators intended to blow up and which could have been the largest terrorist operation in Europe with significant loss of lives and other injuries.<\/p>\n We were relieved when we found that excellent cooperation between various security institutions within Europe led to the foiling of this plot. We were equally grateful to the Belgian independent judiciary who did an enormous job to prove beyond reasonable doubt that this was indeed a terrorist act and gave lengthy prison sentences to all four convicts.<\/p>\n This treaty is a travesty of justice, nullifying the monumental work of the Belgian judiciary in establishing the crime and securing maximum sentence for Assadi and his accomplices, and encouraging Iranian-backed state-sponsored terrorism in Europe.<\/p>\n Instead, we had hoped that the conviction of Assadi would open the eyes of policymakers in our democratic countries to see clearly how the clerical regime in Iran is using its diplomats to further its terrorist and fundamentalist intentions in the West. In our view, the right policy after Assadi\u2019s conviction would have been to shut down Iran\u2019s embassies, expel agents of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence, and let Iran know that it has to pay a very heavy price for breaking international norms and engaging in terrorism.<\/p>\n We call on the Belgian government to withdraw this bill and to teach the leaders of the Iranian regime by its actions that it is not ready to sacrifice rule of law and judiciary independence in order to appease them.<\/p>\n Raymonde Folco, former MP Paul Forseth, former MP July 4, 2022 Statement Shameful treaty to release Iranian convicted terrorists The Canadian Friends of a Democratic Iran (CFDI), a non-partisan NGO that has followed the situation of human rights […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":261187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,19,3269],"tags":[198,222,3270],"class_list":{"0":"post-261186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran-resistance","8":"category-terrorism-a-fundamentalism","9":"category-iran-belgium-treaty-prisoners","10":"tag-ncri","11":"tag-iranian-resistance","12":"tag-assadi"},"yoast_head":"\nShameful treaty to release Iranian convicted terrorists<\/h2>\n
\nCo-Chair<\/p>\n
\nCo-Chair<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"