Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
The Belgian Foreign Ministry announced the new diplomatic movement, which included the appointment of more than 25 ambassadors and consuls general. The changes included Arab and African countries, as well as in Latin America, Japan and Europe, including Christian Domez, Belgian ambassador to the State of Kuwait. Where he will serve as ambassador to Belgium
Antoine Evrard, who was notably a diplomatic advisor to Charles Michel when he was prime minister, got here the third post as Belgian ambassador abroad, after serving in Mexico and Belize. Antoine Evrard was also, before that, the First Secretary of the Belgian Embassy in Iran and Counselor at his country's embassy in Morocco.
A new ambassador has also been appointed to Iran, where a revolution has been raging since the death of young Mohsa Amini following her arrest by the now abolished morality police.
The new ambassador to Iran is Michel Malherbe, who currently holds the position of Director of Foreign Personnel in the Federal General Services of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but before that, Michel held several diplomatic positions around the world, including the position of Consul General in Hong Kong, the post of Belgian ambassador to Beijing and Ankara.
In Tehran, the task of “Mallerbe” will also be to advance the file of Olivier Vandecastel, this Belgian humanitarian worker who has been imprisoned for nine months in Iran, without “any valid legal reason,” according to the Belgian diplomacy.
The announcement of the new diplomatic movement, including the new Belgian ambassador to Iran, came hours before an expected decision today, Thursday, by the Belgian Constitutional Court, on the issue of suspending the prisoner exchange treaty with Iran, according to the Belgian news agency. And in March 2022, Belgium and Iran signed a treaty according to which Iranians imprisoned in Belgium can be transferred to their country and vice versa. At the end of July, the Belgian parliament ratified the treaty, which was criticized by many from the Belgian opposition and opposition movements against the regime in Tehran. The NCRI even went to the Belgian Constitutional Court to request the suspension of the treaty.
The treaty was published in the Belgian Official Gazette on 4 November after it had been ratified by the Iranian authorities. The treaty allows for the exchange of two prisoners, terrorist diplomat Assadollah Assadi, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Belgium in 2021 for planning an attack on an Iranian opposition meeting in Paris, and Belgian development aid worker Olivier Vandecastel. , who was arrested in Iran on February 24 for reasons that are not clear. His family announced on November 29 that he was on a hunger strike to protest the inhumane conditions in which he was being held.