Sweden and Iran have exchanged prisoners, with Sweden releasing a former Iranian official convicted of his role in a mass execution in the 1980s and Iran releasing two Swedes who were detained there, according to officials.
Oman facilitated the prisoner transfer, according to a statement from the country’s foreign ministry.
“Omani efforts resulted in the two sides agreeing on a mutual release, as those released were transferred from Tehran and Stockholm,” stated the statement.
Former Iranian official Hamid Noury was released from prison in Sweden after being convicted of his role in the 1988 mass execution of political prisoners in Iran.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in a statement that Swedish citizens Johan Floderus and Saeed Azizi, who had been jailed in Iran, were returning to Sweden.
Report says Noury, 63, was arrested at a Stockholm airport in 2019 and later sentenced to life in prison for war crimes for the mass execution and torture of political prisoners at the Gohardasht prison in Karaj, Iran, in 1988. He denied the charges.
An Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson described Noury as a hostage in a statement to local media, saying his imprisonment was due to an “illegal Swedish court decision that lacked legitimacy”.
Noury told reporters his case had been complicated and sensitive. “They said even God cannot free Hamid Noury, but he did,” he told reporters on his arrival in Iran.
Meanwhile, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition of groups opposed to Iran’s Islamic Republic government, said it appeared Sweden had yielded to blackmail and hostage-taking tactics in a move that would encourage Tehran.
Lawyer Kenneth Lewis, who represented a dozen plaintiffs in the Noury case in Sweden, said his clients were not consulted and were “appalled and devastated” over Noury’s release.
Floderus, a European Union employee, was arrested in Iran in 2022 and charged with spying for Israel and “corruption on earth”, a crime that carries the death penalty.
Saeed Azizi, a Swedish-Iranian dual national, was arrested in Iran in November 2023 on what Sweden termed “wrongful grounds.”
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, welcomed the release of the two Swedes from “unjustified Iranian custody” and praised Sweden for its efforts to secure their release.
Ahmadreza Djalali, another Swedish-Iranian dual national who was imprisoned in 2016, is still in an Iranian jail. Djalali, an emergency medicine doctor, was arrested in Iran in 2016 during an academic visit.
