London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 09, 2025

Belgium reveals aid worker held for months in Iran

Belgium reveals aid worker held for months in Iran

Iran has held Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele in isolation in jail for five months and his health is deteriorating, his friend has said.

News of his plight emerged on Tuesday when the justice minister revealed a Belgian citizen was accused of spying.

Belgian MPs are due to decide on Wednesday whether to back a law allowing prisoner exchanges with Iran.

"What I want is Olivier free, I don't care how it's done," his friend Olivier Van Steirtegem told the BBC.

While the Belgian government has not linked Vandecasteele's case to the proposed treaty with Iran, it came to light amid increasing political opposition to the plan to legalise prisoner swaps.

Several MPs and a group of former judges have warned that the treaty could set a dangerous precedent by encouraging Iran and other states to take innocent prisoners, with the aim of using them as a bargaining tool.

Members of the dissident Iranian community protested in Brussels on Tuesday against the plan.

Iran has pressed Belgium to release its alleged top intelligence official in Europe, Assadollah Assadi, who was given a 20 year jail sentence in Antwerp last year for plotting to bomb a rally by an exiled Iranian opposition group.

Iran holds a number of European citizens in its prisons, including Brussels university lecturer Prof Ahmadreza Djalali, who has dual Iranian-Swedish citizenship. An emergency medicine specialist, he was arrested during a business trip in 2016 and sentenced to death the following year after what human rights groups say was a grossly unfair trial on a charge of spying.

The planned prisoner exchange treaty was initially assumed to involve Prof Djalali, until news broke of the Vandecasteele case.

Ahead of a vote in parliament on Wednesday, Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne said it was Belgium's "moral duty" to help Vandecasteele and return innocent Belgians to their families. "I can't say any more about it, also on the family's request... people's lives are at stake," he said.

For several years Olivier Vandecasteele ran operations in Iran for the Norwegian Refugee Council


A close friend for over 20 years, Olivier Van Steirtegem told the BBC that the aid worker was arrested by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and taken to Tehran's notorious Evin prison, where he has been allowed only two brief visits by the ambassador since he was arrested in February.

Vandecasteele, 41, had previously worked in Iran as country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council as well as other agencies, working closely with the Afghan community after working in Kabul. "He's purely humanitarian, not political... an innocent guy in jail," he said.

His friend said he had returned to Tehran in February to close down his apartment against Belgian government advice: "We need to put ourselves in his shoes: he was living there for five or six years - his life was there. He had to go back."

Information has been hard to come by but his friend said there was no bed or furniture in his cell and his health was deteriorating: "He's eating nothing but potatoes, lentils and sugar; he's lost 15kg and has an infection. The Iranians said he'd seen a doctor but the doctor couldn't speak English."

Earlier this year a British-Iranian national, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, was released almost six years after she was arrested on spying charges while visiting Iran with her daughter. She too was held in Evin prison. Iran freed her after months of negotiations and after the UK paid a historic £400m debt.

Mr Van Steirtegem said he was in daily contact with his friend's family: "Anyone in Europe or the UK can understand being in this situation - he's done nothing wrong and is the object of a policy of blackmail," he said.

While he understood objections to the treaty in parliament, it was the only hope for Vandecasteele being released any time soon.

Among the MPs to object to a deal, Flemish Nationalist Peter de Roover said it signalled to "rogue states" that Belgians could be used as bargaining chips without doing anything wrong.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×