The section begins with Johan Floderus being taken from a security check at Tehran's airport to the notorious prison by plainclothes police. The year was 2022 and Floderus was on his way home to Brussels after an eight-day trip to Iran. Two days later, he was informed that he was charged with espionage against the Islamic Republic.
When I now look back on my first time as a detainee, when I was at my weakest, most unable to handle my circumstances, I am glad that I did not know what was waiting, that I managed to convince myself time and time again that it was all a misunderstanding.
Isolated for over 250 days
It is when Floderus tells about the day he was taken back to an isolation cell after a longer period with other prisoners that it breaks for him for the first time.
When the door closes and I am surrounded by the absolute silence, the total loneliness, then I feel abandoned, as if I have been forgotten, by Sweden, by the world, by God.
Floderus was isolated on and off for over 250 days.
Released in exchange for Hamid Noury
On June 15, 2024, Floderus was able to set foot on Swedish soil for the first time after over two years in captivity.
It is now known that he was held as a hostage by Iran in order to pressure Sweden to release the Iranian executioner Hamid Noury, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in Sweden for serious war crimes. On the same day that Floderus, together with Saaed Azizi, who was also imprisoned in Iran, returned to Sweden, Noury was put on a plane to Iran.
That it was the price for my freedom, I and many with me had understood much earlier, that it would actually become so, that the Swedish government would release Noury for my and my fellow hostage Saeed Azizi's freedom, I understood for the first time during our layover in Oman. There, I was face to face with the smiling executioner for a brief moment.
