Iran envoy charged in plot in Germany

BERLIN — An Iranian diplomat was charged Wednesday in Germany with activity as a foreign agent and conspiracy to commit murder.

Assadollah Assadi, a Vienna-based diplomat, is accused of contracting a couple in Belgium to attack an annual meeting of an exiled Iranian opposition group in Villepinte, near Paris, German federal prosecutors said.

He gave the Antwerp couple a device containing 500 grams of the explosive TATP during a meeting in Luxembourg in late June, prosecutors said in a statement.

Assadi was detained earlier this month near the German city of Aschaffenburg on a European warrant after the couple with Iranian roots were stopped in Belgium and authorities reported finding powerful explosives in their car.

In their statement, German prosecutors allege that Assadi, who has been registered as a diplomat at the Iranian Embassy in Vienna since 2014, was a member of an Iranian intelligence service whose tasks “primarily include the intensive observation and combating of opposition groups inside and outside of Iran.”

Belgian authorities also accuse Assadi of being part of the plot, reportedly aimed at setting off explosives at the annual rally of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq group in France. Mujahedeen-e-Khalq is an exiled opposition group based near Paris.