Iranian diplomat held over Paris rally bomb plot

Berlin :  An Iranian diplomat suspected of involvement in a bomb plot against an Iranian opposition rally in Paris was charged in Germany yesterday with activity as a foreign agent and conspiracy to commit murder.

Assadollah Assadi, 46, a counsellor at the Iranian embassy in Vienna, has been accused of plotting to blow up a rally in Paris last month of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which called for regime change in Tehran. Prosecutors said that Assadi commissioned a couple living in Antwerp to carry out the attack, and supplied them with 500 grams of the explosive TATP and a detonating device, at a meeting in Luxembourg in late June.

The couple, Amir S., 38, and Nasimeh N, 33, Belgian nationals of Iranian origin, were arrested in Brussels by Belgian security services on the day of the rally on June 30. Assadi has been registered as a third counsellor at the Iranian embassy in Vienna since 2014.

German prosecutors said he is a member of the Iranian intelligence service, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and his job is to spy on opposition groups inside and outside Iran.