DUBAI/BRUSSELS: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards arrested seven people with links to Britain on Sunday, including some who held dual nationality, over anti-government protests that have rocked the country, according to a statement published by state media.
“Seven main leaders of the recent protests related to the UK were detained by intelligence services of the IRGC (Revolutionary Guards) including dual nationals who were trying to leave the country,” the statement read.
The British foreign ministry said it was seeking further information from Iranian authorities on reports that British-Iranian dual nationals had been arrested in Iran.
The reported arrests follow unrest triggered by the Sept. 16 death in detention of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian who was arrested for wearing “inappropriate attire” under Iran’s strict Islamic dress code for women.
The protests, in which demonstrators from all walks of life have called for the fall of Iran’s ruling theocracy, has posed one of the biggest challenges to the republic since the 1979 revolution.
The government has blamed the unrest on demonstrators bent on destruction of public property and says they are trained and armed by enemies including the United States and Israel.
BRUSSELS
Meanwhile, supporters of a Belgian aid worker being held in Iran staged a Christmas Day protest in Brussels to demand his immediate release, with a spokesman questioning why a prisoner swap treaty was stalled.
Around 50 people took part in the demonstration under constant rain in the center of the Belgian capital, brandishing pictures of the aid worker, Olivier Vandecasteele.
A spokesman for the campaign to free Vandecasteele, Olivier Van Steirtegem, said the gathering took place because “it’s the first year that Olivier is marking Christmas as a hostage in Iran.”
He said the situation was “unthinkable for his family,” who did not even know where Vandecasteele was being detained.
Vandecasteele, 41, was seized in February and has since been held in conditions that Belgium’s government has described as “inhumane.”
Last week, Iran imposed a 28-year jail term on him, stirring an already bitter debate over a stymied prisoner exchange treaty.
The Belgian government subsequently urged all Belgians in Iran, including dual nationals, to leave the country over the risk that they could be arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned.
Belgium insists Vandecasteele is innocent and was being held as a hostage as Tehran attempts to force Brussels to release an Iranian agent convicted of terrorism.
Under a treaty Belgium and Iran signed earlier this year, Vandecasteele would have been eligible to be swapped for the Iranian Assadollah Assadi.
Assadi, an Iranian diplomat who was stationed in Austria, was arrested in 2018 after German, French and Belgian law enforcement foiled a plot to set off a bomb at a rally outside Paris by an Iranian exiled opposition group.
After three years in detention, he was sentenced last year in Belgium to 20 years in prison for terrorism.
But in early December, Belgium’s constitutional court suspended the implementation of the prisoner swap treaty pending a final ruling on its legality within the next three months.
Van Steirtegem said the Belgian government believed the stalled treaty was “the only path” to getting Vandecasteele freed.
“The question is whether we can accept leaving a Belgian man to potentially die in Iranian jail. All that because we don’t want to transfer a prisoner from here who has already served five years in prison.”
(With Reuters and AFP)
