(Reuters) An Iranian diplomat sentenced to 20 years in prison for planning a bomb attack in France has dropped an appeal in Belgium and will serve his sentence, his representative said on Wednesday.
Belgian authorities have said they will oppose any potential swap deal with Western prisoners, lawyers said.
[Assadollah] Assadi was found guilty of attempted terrorism in February after a foiled plot to bomb a 2018 rally of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a French-based dissident group.
It was the first time an Iranian official had been tried for suspected terrorism in Europe since Iran’s 1979 revolution.
“This has been a political trial since the beginning and he does not want to participate any longer,” Assadi’s lawyer Dimitri de Beco told reporters in Antwerp, where he was sentenced on Feb. 4.
