STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AFP) — Iran and Sweden announced a prisoner exchange on Saturday in which a former Iranian official was released in Sweden in exchange for a European Union (EU) diplomat and a second Swede.

Hamid Noury, a 63-year-old Iranian former prisons official serving a life sentence in Sweden, landed at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport at around 5:30 p.m. where he was welcomed by family members and officials, state television footage showed.

Around five hours later, at 1920 GMT, Johan Floderus, an EU diplomat, and Saeed Azizi, a Swedish national arrested in Iran in November 2023, landed in Stockholm.

“They are free and on Swedish soil again,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told reporters, adding that the pair were reunited with their families.

“They have been through hell on Earth, and are now able to reunite with their loved ones,” he said.

“They are in good condition given the circumstances.”

Floderus, a 33-year-old EU diplomat, had been held in Iran since April 2022 accused of espionage, for which he risked a death sentence.

Following his release, his father, Matts Floderus, told Swedish news agency TT that the family “are of course terribly happy.”

State media in neutral Oman, which has acted as a mediator between Iran and Western governments in the past, said that following its mediation, the two governments had agreed to the “mutual release” of detained nationals.