'Security threats' force Iranian exiles to cancel democracy summit

The US government in Tirana identified threat connected to the conference

Evin Prison, where a Belgian national is being held. Alamy

A conference of Iranian exiles fighting for democratic change at home has been cancelled after a security threat, organisers said.

The Free Iran World Summit, due to be held on Saturday and Sunday in Durres, Albania, was postponed until further notice.

The US embassy in Tirana on Thursday warned of "a potential threat targeting the Free Iran World Summit and advised US citizens to avoid the event.

The threat on the conference comes just three days after Belgium agreed to a law that could see an Iranian diplomat, who was jailed for a plot to bomb a gathering of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, returned home.

Organisers of Saturday’s event confirmed they were cancelling in social media posts and news releases, citing threats and terrorist plots.

They described the planned conference as the “largest ever online international event dedicated to liberating Iran”.

The event promised: “Pro-democracy activists inside Iran, lawmakers, former senior government officials, distinguished personalities, and humanitarians and advocates from around the world will take action in solidarity with the Iranian people’s unflinching struggle for freedom.”

Dr Liam Fox, a British MP who was due to attend, and other keynote speakers are not in Albania, a UK government source said.

Earlier this week, Iranian exiles were among the critics of a new Belgian treaty that allows for prisoner swaps with Iran.

The Belgians saw the treaty as a way to repatriate jailed aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele, a Belgian citizen held in Iran’s notorious Evin prison.

The exiles fear Tehran will use it to retrieve Assadollah Assadi, who is serving a 20-year jail term over a bomb plot in Europe that he planned while a diplomat.

Assadi, 50, was found guilty of orchestrating a terrorist plot that was foiled at the 11th hour in June 2018, when police officers arrested a Belgian-Iranian couple carrying explosives.

They were travelling to France to blow up an annual gathering near Paris of the NCRI, a coalition of opponents of the Tehran regime.

A court in Antwerp ruled that Assadi had masterminded the plan on behalf of Iranian intelligence, under diplomatic cover as an envoy to Austria — and thus had no immunity in Belgium.