Iranian diplomat given 20 years for Paris bomb plot

ANTWERP, Belgium: A Belgian court convicted an Iranian diplomat on Thursday for plotting a thwarted 2018 bombing of an opposition rally outside Paris and ordered him jailed for 20 years.

The trial was conducted under tight security in the Belgian port of Antwerp and has further poisoned already tense relations between Tehran and European capitals. The terrorism conviction was also claimed as a victory by the exiled National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), the opposition group that was targeted for attack. Assadollah Assadi, now 49, was attached to the Iranian mission in Austria when he supplied explosives for an attack that was planned for a June 30, 2018 NCRI rally in France.