BRUSSELS: Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo on Wednesday urged Iran’s president to “immediately” set free an aid worker held by Tehran in a case denounced as hostage diplomacy.
Iran arrested Olivier Vandecasteele, 42, in February 2022 and sentenced him at the start of this year to more than 12 years behind bars for “espionage” as well as ordering him to be subjected to 74 lashes.
“My message was very clear: Olivier Vandecasteele is an innocent man and must be released immediately,” De Croo tweeted after a phone call with Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi.
“In the meantime, his inhumane prison conditions must change.”
UN rights experts have slammed Vandecasteele’s detention as a “flagrant violation” of international law.
His backers and rights groups say he is being held as part of Iran’s “hostage diplomacy” to try to get Belgium to release an Iranian diplomat incarcerated for terrorism.
The diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, was found guilty in 2021 of masterminding a plot to blow up an event organized by an Iranian exiled opposition group outside Paris in 2018.
The plot was foiled by European intelligence services, and Assadi, a diplomat stationed in Austria who was identified as having provided the explosives for the bomb, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
In July last year, Belgium and Iran signed a prisoner-swap treaty that Brussels viewed as a path to free Vandecasteele.
But Belgium’s Constitutional Court suspended the treaty after exiled Iranian opposition members challenged it on the grounds it would lead to the release of Assadi.
The court is set to rule on the legality of the treaty by March 8.
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Belgium PM tells Iranian leader to free aid worker
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Belgium PM tells Iranian leader to free aid worker
- Iran arrested Olivier Vandecasteele, 42, in February 2022 and sentenced him at the start of this year to more than 12 years behind bars for "espionage"
- "My message was very clear: Olivier Vandecasteele is an innocent man and must be released immediately," tweeted Belgian PM
UK’s Starmer urges ‘sleeping giant’ Europe to curb dependence on US
MUNICH, Germany: British leader Keir Starmer will tell the Munich Security Conference that Europe is “a sleeping giant” and must rely less on the United States for its defense, his office said Friday.
In a speech on Saturday at the summit, the UK prime minister will argue that the continent must shift from overdependence on the United States toward a more European NATO.
“I’m talking about a vision of European security and greater European autonomy that does not herald US withdrawal but answers the call for more burden sharing in full and remakes the ties that have served us so well,” Starmer is expected to say.
The gathering comes as European leaders remain concerned that a United States led by President Donald Trump can no longer be relied upon to be the guarantor of their security.
Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has frequently criticized European countries for not sharing enough of the burden on common defense, and raised questions about the future of NATO.
European members of the transatlantic military alliance are rushing to build up their defenses in the face of an increasingly belligerent Moscow, whose war in Ukraine is set to enter its fifth year this month.
“As I see it — Europe is a sleeping giant. Our economies dwarf Russia’s, 10 times over,” Starmer will tell allies, according to excerpts released ahead of his address.
“We have huge defense capabilities. Yet, too often, all of this has added up to less than the sum of its parts,” he was to say, citing fragmented planning and procurement problems.
Late last year, talks on Britain joining the bloc’s new 150-billion-euro (£130 billion) rearmament fund broke down, reportedly because London baulked at the price for entry.
Downing Street said Starmer would use his speech to call for closer UK-EU defense cooperation.
“There is no British security without Europe, and no European security without Britain. That is the lesson of history — and it is today’s reality too,” Starmer was to say.
The UK government announced on Friday that Britain will spend more than £400 million this financial year on hypersonic and long-range weapons, including through joint projects with France, Germany and Italy.
Starmer, whose center-left Labour party is being squeezed on opposite ends of the political spectrum by the anti-immigrant Reform UK group and the more leftwing Greens, was to say leaders “must level with the public” about the defense costs they face.
He was due to hit out at “peddlers of easy answers on the extreme left and the extreme right,” according to the excerpts.
“The future they offer is one of division and then capitulation. The lamps would go out across Europe once again. But we will not let that happen,” Starmer was expected to say.
In a speech on Saturday at the summit, the UK prime minister will argue that the continent must shift from overdependence on the United States toward a more European NATO.
“I’m talking about a vision of European security and greater European autonomy that does not herald US withdrawal but answers the call for more burden sharing in full and remakes the ties that have served us so well,” Starmer is expected to say.
The gathering comes as European leaders remain concerned that a United States led by President Donald Trump can no longer be relied upon to be the guarantor of their security.
Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has frequently criticized European countries for not sharing enough of the burden on common defense, and raised questions about the future of NATO.
European members of the transatlantic military alliance are rushing to build up their defenses in the face of an increasingly belligerent Moscow, whose war in Ukraine is set to enter its fifth year this month.
“As I see it — Europe is a sleeping giant. Our economies dwarf Russia’s, 10 times over,” Starmer will tell allies, according to excerpts released ahead of his address.
“We have huge defense capabilities. Yet, too often, all of this has added up to less than the sum of its parts,” he was to say, citing fragmented planning and procurement problems.
Late last year, talks on Britain joining the bloc’s new 150-billion-euro (£130 billion) rearmament fund broke down, reportedly because London baulked at the price for entry.
Downing Street said Starmer would use his speech to call for closer UK-EU defense cooperation.
“There is no British security without Europe, and no European security without Britain. That is the lesson of history — and it is today’s reality too,” Starmer was to say.
The UK government announced on Friday that Britain will spend more than £400 million this financial year on hypersonic and long-range weapons, including through joint projects with France, Germany and Italy.
Starmer, whose center-left Labour party is being squeezed on opposite ends of the political spectrum by the anti-immigrant Reform UK group and the more leftwing Greens, was to say leaders “must level with the public” about the defense costs they face.
He was due to hit out at “peddlers of easy answers on the extreme left and the extreme right,” according to the excerpts.
“The future they offer is one of division and then capitulation. The lamps would go out across Europe once again. But we will not let that happen,” Starmer was expected to say.
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