TEHRAN: Iran has hanged nine convicted drug traffickers in current days, state media reported Tuesday, because it retains up one of many world’s highest charges of execution.
Three had been hanged at a jail within the northwestern province of Ardabil on fees of “shopping for and transporting heroin and opium”, the official IRNA information company mentioned.
The different six had been executed individually on fees of trafficking “methamphetamine, heroin and hashish”, it added.
Iran lies on a serious opium-smuggling route between Afghanistan and Europe and has one of many world’s highest charges of home opiate use.
Figures cited by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 2021 recommend 2.8 million individuals have a drug drawback in Iran.
Iranian authorities have launched a number of campaigns to struggle drug abuse and trafficking, and frequently announce massive seizures of opiates smuggled from neighbouring Afghanistan.
In June, Amnesty International reported that Iranian authorities had executed at the very least 173 individuals convicted of drug-related offences in the course of the first 5 months of 2023.
The determine made up round two thirds of all executions in Iran throughout that interval, it added.
Iran says executions are carried out solely after exhaustive authorized proceedings and are a obligatory deterrent in opposition to drug trafficking.
It executes extra individuals per yr than another nation besides China, in accordance with Amnesty.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights group mentioned in November that the Islamic republic had executed greater than 700 individuals in 2023, the very best determine in eight years. –eNM
