TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran has decided to release two Swedish construction workers who had been convicted of espionage and imprisoned for taking photographs of military installations, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Monday.

Spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said the two men would be handed over to Swedish diplomats and visiting lawmakers, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

In Stockholm, the Swedish Foreign Ministry said it would not comment until the men – Stefan Johansson and Jari Hjortmar – had returned safely home.

Iranian Justice Minister Jamal Karimirad said last May that the two had been convicted of photographing military installations and sentenced to three years in prison apiece. Hosseini said Monday the sentence had been only two years.

Mr. Hosseini said Iran had decided to release the men early to conform with the government’s “humanitarian policy,” IRNA reported.

By releasing the prisoners, Iran may be trying to defuse anger in Europe over its seizure last month of 15 British sailors off the Iraqi coast. Iran held the sailors for 13 days before releasing them under intense international pressure.

Swedish media have reported that the Swedes, both construction workers in their 30s, had taken pictures of military buildings and telecommunications equipment on Qeshm, an Iranian island in the Strait of Hormuz about 870 miles south of Tehran.

When their sentences were announced last year, the Swedes’ Iranian lawyer Muhammed Hassan Azemati said they had taken the photographs, but “they have not done any action intentionally, and their actions have not been organized.”

Urban Ahlin, a Swedish legislator who has campaigned for their release, told The Associated Press on Monday that Messrs. Johansson and Hjortmar had traveled to Iran to demonstrate a new technique of casting cement floors.

Mr. Ahlin, the deputy chairman of the Swedish parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said he would go to Iran’s Foreign Ministry in Tehran, where he expected the two men to be handed over later Monday.

“I have been met with great understanding from the Iranian colleagues and politicians that I’ve spoken to,” he said in a phone interview from Tehran.

Ann Johansson, Mr. Stefan’s wife, credited Mr. Ahlin with securing the Swedes’ release.

“He has been our mainstay during this time and the authorities down there asked that he be part of the negotiations,” she told Sweden’s TV4. “Of course I’m full of hope, but I don’t dare to get really happy until I see Stefan at the airport tomorrow.”

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Associated Press Writer Karl Ritter in Stockholm contributed to this report.