Asia

Asia

Iran hangs dozens of drug traffickers in early 2011

30 January 2011 04:52 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Iran has hanged dozens of drug traffickers in the first days of 2011 and vows to further pursue the campaign against drug smugglers, APA reports quoting Xinhua News Agency .

On Saturday, Iran hanged an Iranian-Dutch woman who was identified as Zahra Bahrami for smuggling drugs into Iran, keeping and selling them in the country.

Bahrami was charged with "keeping and selling drugs," the Tehran prosecutor’s office said.

"The convicted woman was a member of an international gang engaged in drug transits," said the prosecutor.

She smuggled drugs twice into Iran and distributed cocaine inside the country via Dutch connections, said the judiciary official.

She was arrested for "security crimes," but investigators found in her house 450 grams of cocaine and 420 grams of opium, and later investigations revealed that she had sold 150 grams of cocaine in Iran, said a report by the official IRNA news agency citing the prosecutor’s office.

Earlier, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that Iran would not surrender to the Western propaganda over Bahrami’s case, adding that her case involved drug smuggling.

"The western countries should welcome Iran’s campaign against drug smuggling and even cooperate with Iran in this regard," Mehmanparast was quoted as saying by IRNA.

Iranian judiciary officials have reiterated their determination to fight drug smuggling into the country.
Iran is located at the crossroad of international drug smuggling from Afghanistan, the world’s top opium producer, to Europe.
Bahrami’s hanging followed a string of executions of drug traffickers in the Islamic republic earlier in the month.
On Jan. 19, Iran hanged 10 men in the city of Karaj, 45 km west of Tehran, for supplying and distributing different kinds of drugs.
On Jan. 13, Iran hanged five drug traffickers in the western city of Khorramabad, the capital city of Lorestan province, for supplying and distributing drugs, after it had hanged seven drug traffickers in Tehran a day earlier for keeping and distributing heroin, hashish and opium.
On Jan. 3, Iran hanged seven unidentified drug traffickers in the central prison of the western Kermanshah city who were convicted of producing and distributing heroin and crack, Kermanshah prosecutor Mojtaba Maleki was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency.
Two days earlier, Iran also reported the execution of eight drug smugglers in the central city of Qom.
Drug trafficking, along with some other crimes including murder, adultery, rape and armed robbery, is subject to death penalty in Iran.