{"id":27899,"date":"2024-06-16T04:56:33","date_gmt":"2024-06-16T08:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=27899"},"modified":"2024-06-16T04:56:33","modified_gmt":"2024-06-16T08:56:33","slug":"iranian-convicted-of-war-crimes-freed-in-swedish-swap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2024\/06\/16\/iranian-convicted-of-war-crimes-freed-in-swedish-swap\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranian convicted of war crimes freed in Swedish swap"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An Iranian convicted in Sweden of war crimes has been freed as part of a prisoner swap between the two countries.<\/b><\/p>\n

Hamid Noury, who was serving a life sentence, has returned to Tehran while Johan Floderus, a Swedish diplomat and dual national Saeed Azizi arrived back in Stockholm late on Saturday evening.<\/p>\n

Mr 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.<\/p>\n

Mr Floderus was detained in Iran two years ago on charges of spying while Mr Azizi was arrested last November and sentenced to five years in prison.<\/p>\n

Relations between Sweden and Iran have deteriorated since Mr Noury’s conviction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Announcing the swap,\u00a0Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said<\/a>, <\/span>Iran had made Mr Floderus and Mr Azizi “both pawns in a cynical negotiation game, with the aim of getting Iranian citizen Hamid Noury \u200b\u200breleased from prison in Sweden”.<\/p>\n

He added: “He is convicted of serious crimes committed in Iran in the 1980s.”<\/p>\n

Kazem Gharibabadi, secretary of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights,\u00a0said in a post on X, formerly Twitter,<\/a>\u00a0on Saturday that Mr Noury had been “illegally detained” in Sweden but was now free.<\/p>\n

Mr Noury was accused of committing war crimes and murder in 1988 when, according to Swedish prosecutors, he was assistant to the deputy prosecutor at Gohardasht prison in Karaj.<\/p>\n

He was the first person to face prosecution for participating in the execution of thousands of prisoners, which Iran’s establishment has never formally acknowledged.<\/p>\n

In 1988, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iraqi-backed leftist opposition group, had attacked Iran during the Iran and Iraq War.<\/p>\n