SANAA — An Iranian diplomat held hostage in Yemen since 2013 returned home to Tehran on Thursday amid conflicting accounts of how he was freed from his unidentified abductors.

IRNA, Iran’s state news agency, quoted deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian as saying that an Iranian intelligence operation in Yemen rescued Noor Ahmad Nikbakht, an administrative official at Tehran’s embassy in Sanaa. Iran’s state-run Press TV showed Nikbakht looking healthy and wearing a suit when he met his family and Abdollahian on arrival at Tehran airport.

But Yemeni media run by the Iran-backed Houthi group that controls Sanaa told a different story, saying the diplomat was freed in a prisoner exchange that took place in another country.

Nikbakht was the second high-profile hostage freed in Yemen this week. A Saudi Arabian diplomat seized in 2012 was released on Monday after being held by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Iran’s Abdollahian told IRNA that “a special team from the Intelligence Ministry was able to free Nikbakht from the clutches of terrorists in a series of complex and difficult operations in a very particular part of Yemen.”