(Reuters) Belgian foreign affairs minister Hadja Lahbib is facing calls for resignation after granting visas to delegations from Iranian and Russian cities to attend a mayors convention in Brussels last week.
Lahbib is under scrutiny for having approved [visa] requests for citizens from two countries under international sanctions and only three weeks after Belgian NGO worker Olivier Vandecasteele was released from an Iranian jail.
Vandecasteele, 42, was arrested on a visit to Iran in February 2022 and sentenced in January to 40 years in prison and 74 lashes on charges including spying.
He was freed last month in a prisoner swap with an Iranian diplomat who had been imprisoned in Belgium in connection with a failed bomb plot.
