Announcing the swap, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said: , OutIran used Mr. Florderus and Mr. Azizi as “hostages in a cynical game of negotiation aimed at securing the release of Iranian citizen Hamid Noury from a Swedish prison.”
“He was convicted of serious crimes committed in Iran in the 1980s,” he added.
Kazem Gharibabadi, secretary-general of Iran's High Commission for Human Rights, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter:, Out Mr. Nouri was illegally detained in Sweden last Saturday but has now been released and returned to Iran.
According to Swedish prosecutors, Mr. Nouri was accused of committing war crimes and murder in 1988 while working as an assistant to the deputy prosecutor of Gohardasht prison in Karaj.
He was the first person to be charged with participating in the execution of thousands of prisoners, something the Iranian government has never officially acknowledged.
In 1988, the Iraqi-backed leftist opposition group Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) attacked Iran during the Iran-Iraq War.
Iran's then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered the execution of all prisoners loyal to or sympathetic to the group.
Human rights groups estimate that between July and September 1988, between 2,800 and 5,000 people, both men and women, were executed at sites including Gohardasht prison.
