Iran swaps EU diplomat for Sweden freeing convict for '88 mass executions

Iran and Sweden carried out a prisoner swap on Saturday that saw Tehran release a European Union diplomat and another man for an Iranian convicted in Stockholm of committing war crimes over his part in 1988 mass executions in the Islamic Republic.

The arrest of Hamid Nouri by Sweden in 2019 as he travelled there as a tourist likely sparked the detentions of the two Swedes, part of a long-running strategy by Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution to use those with ties abroad as chip in negotiations with the West.

As Iranian state television claimed without evidence that Nouri had been illegally detained, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson described the detentions of diplomat Johan Floderus and Saeed Azizi as a hell on earth the two men faced.

Iran has made these Swedes pawns in a cynical negotiation game with the aim of getting the Iranian citizen Hamid Nouri released from Sweden," Kristersson said. It has been clear all along that this operation would require difficult decision