An Iranian diplomat has been sentenced in a Belgian court. Belgium’s ambassador to Tehran has been summoned to Iran’s foreign ministry in protest. Iran has said Tehran does not accept the Belgian court’s ruling as a violation of international law.

On Tuesday, Belgium’s ambassador was summoned and told that Tehran was protesting against the sentencing of Iranian diplomat Asadullah Assad to 20 years in prison. A court in the Belgian city of Antwerp on Thursday sentenced Iranian diplomat Assad to 20 years in prison for plotting to bomb a 2016 Monafekin group conference in the French capital, Paris.

In June 2016, Belgian security forces seized a car packed with explosives, claiming that Iranian diplomat Asadi had handed over the explosives to two Belgian nationals. A day later, Assad was detained in Germany.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a statement on Thursday that the process of arresting and imprisoning Assad was “completely illegal”. He called the incident a “clear violation of international law”, beginning with the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

Khatibzadeh said the Islamic Republic of Iran was rejecting the Belgian judiciary’s entire judicial process. He added that the Belgian court had given the verdict as a result of the environment created in European countries by the terrorist Monafakin group through a massive campaign.