A Swedish journalist arrested at the end of March in Turkey and jailed for "insulting" President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been freed and is heading home, Stockholm said on Friday, May 16. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson wrote on X that Joakim Medin was "en route for Sweden from Turkey" and would land "in a few hours." He thanked foreign ministry staff and Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard for having worked "intensively" behind the scenes on the case, as well as European colleagues, AFP reports.

Medin, 40, is a reporter for the Swedish newspaper Dagens ETC and was stopped on his arrival in Istanbul on March 27. He had traveled to Turkey to cover protests triggered by the arrest on March 19 of the popular Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who is seen as Erdogan's main political rival.

At the end of April, Medin was given an 11-month suspended jail sentence at a court in Ankara for "insulting the president" and appeared by videolink from a cell at a prison in the Istanbul region. Despite the suspended sentence, Medin remained behind bars while awaiting a separate trial for "belonging to a terror organization." Medin denies the charge that he participated in a protest by the banned Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) in Stockholm in January 2023.