An Iranian convicted in Sweden of war crimes has been released as part of a prisoner exchange between the two countries.
Hamid Noury, who was serving a life sentence, returned to Tehran while Johan Floderusa Swedish diplomat and dual national, Saeed Azizi, returned to Stockholm on Saturday night.
Noury was arrested in Sweden in 2019 and convicted of involvement in the mass execution of political prisoners in Iran more than three decades ago.
Floderus was detained in Iran two years ago on charges of espionage, while 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 exchange, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Iran made Floderus and Azizi “both pawns in a cynical negotiating game, with the aim of freeing Iranian citizen Hamid Noury from prison in Sweden”.
He added: “He was convicted of serious crimes committed in Iran in the 1980s.”
Kazem Gharibabadi, secretary of the High Council for Human Rights of Iran, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday that Noury had been “illegally detained” in Sweden but was now free.
Noury was accused of 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 never formally recognized.
In 1988, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iraqi-backed left-wing opposition group, attacked Iran during the Iran-Iraq War.
Iran’s then-Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued an order to execute all prisoners who were loyal or sympathetic to the group.
Human rights groups estimate that between 2,800 and 5,000 women and men were executed at sites, including Gohardasht prison, between July and September 1988.
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, was facing the death penalty after his arrest in Iran in 2022 on espionage charges while on vacation.
Azizi, an Iranian-Swedish citizen in his 60s, was found guilty of “meeting and collusion against national security.”
Oman helped negotiate a prisoner exchange and played a key role in the release of another European citizen last week. French banker Louis Arnaud was released after two years of detention in Iran.
