An Iranian convicted of war crimes in Sweden has been released as part of a prisoner swap between the two countries.
Hamid Noury, who was serving a life sentence, has since returned to Tehran Johan Floderusa Swedish diplomat and dual national Saeed Azizi arrived in Stockholm late on Saturday evening.
Mr Noury was arrested in Sweden in 2019 and convicted more than thirty years ago for involvement in the mass execution of political prisoners in Iran.
Mr Floderus was detained in Iran two years ago on espionage charges, while Mr Azizi was arrested last November and sentenced to five years in prison.
Relations between Sweden and Iran have deteriorated since Noury’s conviction.
Announcing the swap, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Iran had made Mr Floderus and Mr Azizi “both pawns in a cynical bargaining game, aiming to release Iranian national Hamid Noury from Swedish prison”.
He added: “He has been convicted of serious crimes committed in Iran in the 1980s.”
Kazem Gharibabadi, secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council for Human Rights, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday that Noury was “illegally detained” in Sweden but was now free.
Mr. Noury was charged with committing war crimes and murder in 1988 when, according to Swedish prosecutors, he was an assistant to the deputy prosecutor at Gohardasht prison in Karaj.
He was the first person to be prosecuted for participating in the execution of thousands of prisoners, something the Iranian establishment has never formally acknowledged.
In 1988, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iraqi-backed left-wing opposition group, had attacked Iran during the Iran-Iraq War.
Iran’s then Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued an order to execute all prisoners loyal to or sympathetic to the group.
Human rights organizations estimate that between July and September 1988, between 2,800 and 5,000 women and men were executed at locations including Gohardasht Prison.
Mr Noury, 63, was arrested after arriving at Stockholm airport on a flight from Iran. He denied the charges against him but was found guilty of “serious violations of international humanitarian law and murder”.
He was tried under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows countries to prosecute people for serious crimes against international law that occurred elsewhere.
This includes war crimes, genocide, torture and crimes against humanity.
Floderus, 33, faced the death penalty after his arrest in Iran in 2022 on charges of espionage while on vacation.
Mr Azizi, an Iranian-Swedish citizen in his early 60s, was found guilty of “conspiracy and conspiracy against national security”.
Oman helped negotiate the prisoner swap and played a key role in the release of another European citizen last week. French banker Louis Arnaud was released after two years in captivity in Iran.
