Iran and Sweden exchange prisoners in Oman-mediated swap

Iran and Sweden announced a prisoner swap on Saturday that resulted in the release of a former Iranian official in Sweden in exchange for a European Union diplomat and a second Swede.

“Hamid Noury, who has been illegally detained in Sweden since 2019, is free and will return to the country within a few hours,” said Kazem Gharibabadi, head of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, in a post on the X social media platform.

Shortly afterwards, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said that Johan Floderus, an EU diplomat, and a second Swedish citizen had been released by Iran and were on a flight home.

Floderus, 33 years old, had been detained in Iran since April 2022, accused of espionage. He was at risk of being sentenced to death.

After his release, his father, Matts Floderus, told Swedish news agency TT that the family “is, of course, terribly happy”.

The other Swede, Saeed Azizi, was arrested in November 2023.

They are returning home “and will finally be reunited with their relatives,” Kristersson said.

Gharibabadi said Noury’s release was thanks to efforts led by the late Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who died in a helicopter crash next door. President Ebrahim Raisi in May.

State media in neutral Oman, which has acted as a mediator between Iran and Western governments in the past, said that after mediation the two governments agreed to the “mutual release” of the detained citizens.

“Those released were transferred from Tehran and Stockholm to Muscat today, June 15, 2024, for repatriation,” the official Omani News Agency said.

Noury ​​landed at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport at around 5:30 p.m., where he was greeted by family and officials, including Gharibabadi, state television footage showed.

A former employee of Iranian prisons, Noury ​​was arrested at Stockholm airport in November 2019 and later sentenced to life in prison for mass murders in Iranian prisons in 1988.

The 63-year-old thanked the authorities and people of Iran for his release.

He attacked the former People’s Mujahedin rebels of Iran (MEK), whose activists were instrumental in their prosecution and conviction in Sweden, calling them “traitors who sold out their country”.

At least 5,000 prisoners were killed in Iranian prisons in 1988 to avenge attacks carried out by the MEK in the final stages of the Iran-Iraq war, when it fought alongside Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s troops.

The MEK, which remains an illegal “terrorist” organization in Iran, called Sweden’s decision to release Noury ​​“shameful and unjustifiable.”

He said the exchange would encourage Iran “to intensify terrorism, hostage-taking and blackmail.”

A Swedish court found Noury ​​guilty of “serious violations of international humanitarian law and murder”, but he argued that he was on leave during the period in question.

Iran condemned the sentence, but Sweden insisted the trial was held under its principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows it to try a case regardless of where the alleged crime occurred.

Kristersson said Iran made Floderus and Azizi “pawns in a cynical negotiating game, to free Iranian citizen Hamid Noury ​​from prison in Sweden.”

He added that, as prime minister, he had “a special responsibility for the security of Swedish citizens. The government has therefore been working intensively on this issue, together with the Swedish security service, which has negotiated with Iran.”

Kristersson added: “It was clear all along that the operation would require some difficult decisions. Now we have made those decisions.”

At least two other Swedish citizens remain in custody in Iran, including Ahmad Reza Jalali, a dual national, who is on death row after being convicted of espionage.

Tehran does not recognize dual nationality.

At least six other Europeans are detained in Iran, from Austria, Great Britain, France and Germany.

On Thursday, 36-year-old French citizen Louis Arnaud returned to Paris after spending more than 20 months in prison in Iran on national security charges.

Activists and some Western governments accuse Iran of pursuing a strategy of taking foreign citizens hostage to force concessions from the West.

Last year, Oman helped broker a swap deal between Iran and the United States, as well as facilitating the release of six European detainees in Iran.