European Union diplomat Johan Floderus and another man, Saeed Azizi, were released by Iran in exchange for Iranian national Hamid Nouri, who was convicted in Stockholm of committing war crimes for his role in the 1988 mass executions in the Islamic Republic. .
Two Swedish citizens who were released in a prisoner exchange with IranThey have reunited with their families after landing in Stockholm.
The diplomat of the European Union Johan Floderus and another man, Saeed Aziziwere released by Iran in exchange of Hamid Nouri, Iranian convicted in Stockholm for committing war crimes for his participation in the 1988 mass executions in the Islamic Republic.
Floderus and Azizi were received at the airport by the Prime Minister of SwedenUlf Kristersson, and Foreign Minister Tobias Billström.
Kristersson posted on X that The two men had been reunited with their families.ending her post with “Welcome home to Sweden!”
Origin of Nouri’s prison sentence
In 2022, the Stockholm District Court sentenced Nouri to life in prison for his role in the executions. He identified him as an assistant deputy prosecutor at Gohardasht prison, outside the Iranian city of Karaj.
The mass executions of 1988 occurred at the end of Iran’s long war with Iraq. After Iran’s then supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, accepted a ceasefire brokered by the United Nationsmembers of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, heavily armed by Saddam Hussein, stormed the Iranian border in a surprise attack.
International human rights groups estimate that up to 5,000 people were executed. Iran has never fully acknowledged the executions, apparently carried out by order of Khomeini.
The family of Johan Floderuswho worked for the European External Action Service, said that He was arrested in April 2022 at the Tehran airport when he returned from a vacation with friends.
His arrest represented yet another case of Tehran using foreigners or people with dual nationality as pawns in negotiations with the West.
In case of Azizi It was not as loud as Floderus’s. In February, the group Human Rights Activists in Iran reported that the Tehran Revolutionary Court had sentenced this citizen with dual nationality to five years in prison. Iranian and Swedish on charges of “assembly and collusion against national security.” The group said Azizi has cancer.
