Iran has hanged 9 convicted drug traffickers in latest days, state media reported Tuesday, because it retains up one of many world’s highest charges of execution.

Three have been hanged at a jail within the northwestern province of Ardabil on prices of “buying and transporting heroin and opium”, the official IRNA information company mentioned.

The different six have been executed individually on prices of trafficking “methamphetamine, heroin and cannabis”, it added.

Iran lies on a significant 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 counsel 2.8 million individuals have a drug downside in Iran.

Iranian authorities have launched a number of campaigns to struggle drug abuse and trafficking, and often announce massive seizures of opiates smuggled from neighbouring Afghanistan.

In June, Amnesty International reported that Iranian authorities had executed a minimum of 173 individuals convicted of drug-related offences through 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 needed deterrent towards drug trafficking.

It executes extra individuals per yr than another nation besides China, in keeping 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.