Iran and the United States conducted a prisoner swap on Monday, releasing five detainees from each side, according to media reports and Iranian officials.
Five American prisoners, along with two of their family members, boarded a plane that left Tehran for Qatar’s capital Doha on Monday, Qatar-based Al Jazeera quoted a U.S. official as saying.
In the meanwhile, U.S. media reported that U.S. President Joe Biden has granted clemency to five Iranians as part of the prisoner swap deal.
Earlier on Monday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nassar Kanaani confirmed in a press conference that the swap would happen on Monday.
Kanaani said five Iranian nationals imprisoned in the U.S. would be released, and Iran would hand over the same number of American citizens incarcerated in Iran.
Two of the Iranian nationals to be released would return to Iran, one would travel to another country where his family is living, and two others would remain in the U.S., where they had been living before their imprisonment, the spokesman added.
Also on Monday, Governor of the Central Bank of Iran Mohammad Reza Farzin said the Iranian assets previously frozen in South Korean banks, amounting to around 5.94 billion dollars, have been transferred to six Iranian accounts in two Qatari banks.
The unfreezing of the Iranian assets is widely seen as part of the prisoner swap deal between Tehran and Washington. However, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian denied in August any link between the prisoner swap with the U.S. and the release of the country’s frozen assets abroad.—Xinhua
