Iran envoy planned France bomb attack

ANTWERP: An Iranian diplomat sentenced to 20 years in prison for planning a bomb attack in France has dropped an appeal in Belgium and will serve his sentence, his representative said.

Belgian authorities have said they will oppose any potential swop deal with Western prisoners, lawyers said.

Assadolah Assadi was found guilty of attempted terrorism in February after a foiled plot to bomb a 2018 rally of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a Frenchbased dissident group.

The Belgian court said he ran a state intelligence network. Assadi bought explosives for the Paris plot with him on a commercial flight to Austria from Iran, it said.