In the arrival hall at Aranda Airport in Stockholm, the Swedish police were waiting for an important person.
It came to their knowledge that a person suspected of war crimes was about to arrive from Iran, named Hamid Nouri.
He did not know that a report against him was submitted to the police. Nouri left the plane on November 9, 2019.
Soon after, a Swedish official made a call saying, "You can go home now."
The recipient of the letter was at the airport, nervously awaiting confirmation of the arrest warrant. He was one of several people who made it possible to arrest the person.
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These people explained in an interview with the BBC their role in an unusual file, of importance to Iran and at the international level.
No one has ever been brought to criminal trial on charges of mass executions and torture of political prisoners in Iran since 1988. Nouri has been arrested and charged in connection with his alleged role in the torture, which he denies.
The principle of international justice was applied to Nuri's arrest, and he is now on trial in Sweden.
It is believed that these crimes were committed during the war between Iraq and Iran towards the end of that war, and that the Iranian leader at that time Ayatollah Khomeini issued an order to execute 5,000 political prisoners.
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Many of those executed were linked to the People's Mojahedin Organization, an anti-Iranian organization linked to Iraq.
At the time, Nouri was working in a prison near Tehran, prosecutors say.
The case has caused embarrassment for Iran's new president, Ebrahim Raisi, who Amnesty International said was a member of the "death committees" responsible for what has been described as the 1988 massacre.
The move will put human rights activists at ease, who have campaigned for a long time for justice for the executions, including Eraj Mesdaki, a former Iranian political prisoner who survived the events of 1988.
He said he witnessed unspeakable crimes while he was detained in Iran.
His experience in that period has shaped his later life since he left Iran in the 1990s. From his exile he had been investigating human rights abuses in Iran ever since, and had hoped that the guilty would be given the opportunity to be brought to justice.
When an opportunity arose in October 2019, he did not hesitate to take steps.
An unexpected source contacted Masdaki and gave him information: an Iranian named Hamid Nouri was planning to travel to Sweden.
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The name was familiar to my credentials, and he knew exactly who to report the information to.
Kefeh Moussaoui is a British lawyer of Iranian origin. It took a conversation with Masdaki and a meeting in London to convince Mousavi to take up the case.
He had informally promised Messadiqi several years ago that those responsible for the 1988 "massacre" would be brought to justice in the West, if possible.
Now Moussaoui had to keep his promise.
“The question was how do we organize this with the Swedish authorities and not miss the opportunity,” he said.
Moussaoui, with the help of a lawyer, collected testimonies and prepared a case file. Meanwhile, the source, who did not wish to be identified, provided details of Nuri's travel plans.
Nouri was coming to Sweden for family reasons, and they made him believe he would visit other European countries, the source said.
Once he learned the date of his trip, Moussaoui submitted the file to the Swedish authorities.
The arrest was the next step, and Moussaoui was confident it would happen, in accordance with international laws that allow countries' courts to try anyone accused of abuse, regardless of where they were committed. This was useful for human rights lawyers to pursue the guilty.
One of the most famous cases in this context is the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the former Nazi, in 1961 in Israel for his role in the Holocaust.
A German court recently tried a Syrian intelligence officer for his participation in the commission of crimes against humanity.
In November 2019, the principle was applied again, this time in Sweden.
"Until the moment of his arrest, I couldn't believe it," he said.
Prosecutors called Masdikli to testify in Nouri's trial, which began nearly two years later, on August 10.
Siddiqi recalled in court what he had suffered in Gohardasht prison during the mass executions of 1988, and he and other witnesses referred to Nuri's role.
As for Nouri's lawyers, they said that there was a mistake and that he was not the intended person, and they questioned the credibility of the witnesses and the possibility of remembering events 30 years after their occurrence.
When the trial concludes in April 2022, judges will decide which of the two sides' testimony is credible.