Iran and Sweden have agreed to a prisoner swap, mediator Oman said on Saturday.
Tehran announced that Iranian national Hamid Nouri, convicted of war crimes by Sweden over mass executions carried out in 1988, had been freed and would return to Iran.
On the same day, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson announced that Swedish citizen and EU diplomat Johan Floderus, as well as dual national Saeed Azizi, had been released "after being imprisoned without reason by Iran".
Oman's Foreign Ministry said the sultanate had brokered the agreement between the two countries, and that the prisoners had been transferred through its capital Muscat.
An official confirmed on Saturday that Nouri, 62, a former Iranian prison official, had been freed and would return to Iran soon.
"Hamid Nouri, who has been in illegal detention in Sweden since 2019, is free and will return to the country in a few hours," Kazem Gharibabadi, head of Iran's High Council for Human Rights, said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
On December 19, a Swedish appeals court confirmed a life sentence for Nouri.
He was found guilty of "grave breaches of international humanitarian law and murder" over his role in a purge, in which at least 5,000 prisoners were killed in Iran in 1988.
Following his conviction, Iran summoned Sweden's charge d'affaires to protest against the sentence.
On Saturday, Sweden's Prime Minister welcomed the return of Floderus and Azizi.
"The Swedish government has worked intensively for them to be released. Today, they will land on Swedish soil and be reunited with their families and loved ones. Welcome home!," he said on X.
In December, Floderus went on trial in Iran on charges of conspiring with Tehran's arch-enemy Israel.
Floderus, 33, had worked as an aide to the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, and in the European External Action Service.
He was arrested on April 17, 2022, at Tehran airport as he was returning from a trip with friends.
Mr Kristersson had demanded the immediate release of Floderus on December 11.
Azizi, 60, was arrested in November 2023 after returning from Sweden to Iran.
In March, a Tehran court upheld a five-year-sentence for Azizi on charges of assembly and collusion against national security.
He was held in Iran's notorious Evin prison. Azizi's lawyer had previously highlighted his deteriorating health condition and said he had prostate cancer.
The exchange takes place after the US and Iran agreed to a limited prisoner exchange last year.
In September last year, Tehran confirmed five Iranian citizens detained in the US would be released in exchange for five Americans held in Iran.
“Under a prisoner swap deal between the two countries, the five Iranian nationals who were held illegally for circumventing Washington’s anti-Iran sanctions will be released,” Iran's Permanent Mission to the UN in New York said at the time.
The announcement by the Iranian mission came after the Biden administration issued a blanket waiver for international banks to transfer $6 billion in frozen Iranian money from South Korea to Qatar without fear of US sanctions.
Iran has been accused of imprisoning foreign or dual nationals and using them as bargaining chips in negotiations.
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Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
Specs
Engine: 51.5kW electric motor
Range: 400km
Power: 134bhp
Torque: 175Nm
Price: From Dh98,800
Available: Now
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Tips for used car buyers
- Choose cars with GCC specifications
- Get a service history for cars less than five years old
- Don’t go cheap on the inspection
- Check for oil leaks
- Do a Google search on the standard problems for your car model
- Do your due diligence. Get a transfer of ownership done at an official RTA centre
- Check the vehicle’s condition. You don’t want to buy a car that’s a good deal but ends up costing you Dh10,000 in repairs every month
- Validate warranty and service contracts with the relevant agency and and make sure they are valid when ownership is transferred
- If you are planning to sell the car soon, buy one with a good resale value. The two most popular cars in the UAE are black or white in colour and other colours are harder to sell
Tarek Kabrit, chief executive of Seez, and Imad Hammad, chief executive and co-founder of CarSwitch.com
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The Africa Institute 101
Housed on the same site as the original Africa Hall, which first hosted an Arab-African Symposium in 1976, the newly renovated building will be home to a think tank and postgraduate studies hub (it will offer master’s and PhD programmes). The centre will focus on both the historical and contemporary links between Africa and the Gulf, and will serve as a meeting place for conferences, symposia, lectures, film screenings, plays, musical performances and more. In fact, today it is hosting a symposium – 5-plus-1: Rethinking Abstraction that will look at the six decades of Frank Bowling’s career, as well as those of his contemporaries that invested social, cultural and personal meaning into abstraction.
WOMAN AND CHILD
Director: Saeed Roustaee
Starring: Parinaz Izadyar, Payman Maadi
Rating: 4/5
Results:
Men's wheelchair 800m T34: 1. Walid Ktila (TUN) 1.44.79; 2. Mohammed Al Hammadi (UAE) 1.45.88; 3. Isaac Towers (GBR) 1.46.46.
