Iran releases Austrians and Danes

On Friday, Iran released a Dane and two Austrians, and Austria and Denmark were quick to express their satisfaction with this step, and thanked the Sultanate of Oman and Belgium for their assistance in this process. The release of the Europeans in exchange for Iranian diplomat Assadullah Assadi comes within the framework of a prisoner exchange in which Iran released Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecastel last week. It also comes after Omani Sultan Haitham bin Tariq visited Iran on his first trip there since he became ruler of the sultanate in 2020.

Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said he was “extremely relieved” that Kamran Qadri and Massoud Mosaheb had been brought home after “years of hard detention in Iran”. Schallenberg explained that Qadri and Mosaheb spent, respectively, “2,709 days and 1,586 days of detention in Iran… It was a diplomatic marathon that paid off in the end.” While Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said he was “happy and relieved that the Danish citizen is on his way to his family’s home in Denmark after being imprisoned in Iran.” He did not name the person, saying his identity was a “personal matter” and he could not go into details.

Schallenberg thanked the foreign ministers of Belgium and the Sultanate of Oman for providing “valuable support,” without clarifying what form it took. Luc Rasmussen thanked Belgium and said Oman “played an important role”.

Earlier, Friday, Belgian Prime Minister Alexandre de Croo announced the release of 3 Europeans who were detained in Iran, and that they are currently on their way from the Sultanate of Oman “to Belgium.” De Croo’s office indicated, in a statement, that the three Europeans are a Danish citizen who was arrested in November 2022 “on the sidelines of women’s rights gatherings”, and two Iranian-Austrian citizens, one of whom was arrested in January 2016 and the second in January 2019. He added. The statement is that «Belgium is currently organizing their transportation through the Sultanate of Oman to Belgium. On this occasion, the Prime Minister would like to thank the Omani authorities for the central role they played in the releases.

The two former detainees, who hold Iranian and Austrian nationalities, are Qumran Qadri and Masoud Musaheb, according to an official source in Vienna. The second was arrested in 2019, then released in November 2022 for medical reasons, but since then he has been prevented from leaving Iran.

Qadri, who was arrested in 2016, was later sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of espionage for the United States. His family has criticized Austria for remaining silent on his case in recent years.

As for Musaheb, who was arrested in 2019, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison in a trial that Amnesty International described as “unfair for vague crimes related to national security.” Amnesty International said that Mosaheb suffers from heart failure and diabetes, which makes his imprisonment more dangerous for him.

It was reported that the Gulfstream 4 aircraft of the Royal Air Force of Oman, which had been on the ground in Tehran for several days, took off shortly before the announcement.

On May 26, Iran released Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecastel after 455 days in detention. The latter returned to Belgium via the Sultanate of Oman also in exchange for the return of an Iranian diplomat who was convicted of terrorism charges and imprisoned in Belgium for about 5 years. The diplomat, Assadullah Assadi, was based in Vienna, and was arrested in the summer of 2018 in Germany, then sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2021 in Belgium after being convicted of organizing an attack that targeted a gathering of Iranian dissidents in France.

There are still more than 10 foreigners arrested in Iran. Human rights organizations stress that Western nationals detained in Iran are victims of a policy based on taking detainees hostage to force foreign powers to make concessions in exchange for their release. Iran insists that their trials were fair, but their supporters maintain that they are innocent. Iran does not recognize dual citizenship and does not allow consular meetings with Iranian detainees of other nationalities. It also does not rule out making deals to exchange them with Iranian prisoners held in the West.

Demonstration and wounded

A number of people were injured when Iranian security forces opened fire on a demonstration protesting the death of a young student shortly after his release, human rights organizations said Friday.

Protests erupted on Thursday evening in Abdanan, Ilam province (west), which is inhabited by Kurds, as reported by the Norway-based Hengau organization, the France-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network, and the “1,500 Tasfir account” that counts the demonstrations. People took to the streets to express their anger after the death of Pamshad Soleimankhani, 21, in late May, just days after he was released from prison.

The “Hengao” organization showed footage of people walking in the street while gunfire was heard, and footage of demonstrators wounded in the torso. The authenticity of the photos could not be immediately verified.

Henghao said that 25 people were injured in the crackdown on protesters who chanted anti-regime slogans. Protests erupted in September in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested on the pretext of violating Iranian dress codes for women.