The ruling in the case of the prisoner transfer treaty between Belgium and Iran is scheduled for Wednesday 8 March, Le Soir reported on Saturday. The confirmation came quietly on Friday on the website of the Constitutional Court; this was in fact the deadline set following the suspended ruling of 8 December last year.
The case of Olivier Vandecasteele, an aid worker in Iran who was detained in Tehran a year ago, has been an ongoing headline in Belgium, with considerable national and international support for his plight. Vandecasteele has been accused of espionage in a sham trial and is currently held in appalling conditions. He has been sentenced by the Iranian authorities to 40 years in prison and 74 lashes.
A prisoner swap was brokered between Belgium and Iran in an effort to repatriate Vandecasteele. However, the treaty was subsequently reconsidered and suspended by Belgium's High Court, which feared that it would become a precedent for the capture of further EU nationals as a means for Iran to use in political blackmail.
The treaty would entail the exchange of Vandecasteele for Iranian diplomat, Assadollah Assadi. Assadi was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Antwerp for plotting a bomb attack against a rally organised by Iranian protesters near Paris.
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The court has three months to decide on the case. If it did not respect this deadline (which cannot be extended), the suspension would automatically be lifted and the law could apply.
Vandecasteele and his family will therefore have to wait for more than two weeks before they will have any certainty on his fate. If the court upholds the suspension of the transfer treaty, the government will have to seek another solution to exchange him for Assadi.
