Iran news in brief, May 6, 2021
Iran news in brief, May 6, 2021 Iran’s Regime Withdraws Appeal for Terrorist Diplomat Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat sentenced to 20 years in prison for a bombing attempt against a major Iranian Resistance gathering, dropped his appeal on Wednesday in Belgium and will serve his sentence. Assadi was arrested along with three of his co-conspirators in June 2018 as they prepared to bomb the Free Iran rally, the annual gathering of the National Council of Resistance of Iran held in France. Assadi was the key coordinator of the attack and personally transferred the bomb from Tehran to Vienna, where his diplomatic mission was located. The terrorists were tried in a court in Antwerp, Belgium. At the time, Assadi tried to raise his diplomatic immunity as pretext to avoid accountability, which was ruled out by the judge. The court’s February 4 verdict found all defendants guilty and sentenced them to 15-20 years in prison. Assadi received the heaviest sentence. On Wednesday, the preliminary hearing was held in the Antwerp Court of Appeal to hear the appeal of the perpetrators of the bombing. Assadi withdrew his appeal shortly after. The three other convicts will continue their appeal process. Iran: Covid-19 Fatalities Exceed 278,300 Over 278,300 people have died of the novel coronavirus across all of Iran’s 31 provinces, according to reports tallied by the Iranian opposition People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran as of Wednesday afternoon local time. The official death toll declared by the regime stands at 73,568 around a fourth of the actual figure. “In some areas the number of people seeking medical care for Covid-19 is on the rise. Our hospital beds are mostly packed, and ICUs are full of dire patients. To this day maybe one percent of the country’s population has been vaccinated,” said Masoud Mardani, a member of the National Covid-19 Task Force on Wednesday. “Therefore, a stoppage in the increasing trend of this illness has nothing to do with vaccination. For vaccination to show its true effect 70 percent of the population needs to be vaccinated or had previously contracted the illness,” he added, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency. Read More: https://www.ncr-iran.org / iranncr / iran_policy Subscribe to NCRI weekly newsletter t.ly/MybJ
