Iran hangs two men for drug trafficking

May 12, 2009 at 09:20

Men found guilty of trafficking hundreds of kilos of narcotics, brings number executed this year to 99.

Iran has hanged two men in a prison in the southeastern city of Zahedan after they were convicted of drug trafficking, the Quds newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The report named them as Mohammad Mehdi Q. and Reza Gholi S. and said they were found guilty of trafficking hundreds of kilos of narcotics. It gave no further details.

Iran is situated along one of the main trafficking routes for cannabis, heroin, opium and morphine produced in Afghanistan. Designer drugs have also found their way into the local market in recent years.

The hangings bring to at least 99 the number of people executed in the Islamic republic so far this year, according to an count by news agency AFP, compared with 246 for the whole of 2008.

The human rights group Amnesty International has said that Iran applied the death penalty more than any other country apart from China in 2007, executing 335 people.

Tehran says the death penalty is a necessary tool for maintaining public security and is only applied after exhaustive judicial proceedings.