Special to WorldTribune.com
The entire male population of an Iranian village was executed for drug smuggling, an Iranian official said.
“We have a village in Sistan and Baluchistan province where every single man has been executed,” Iran’s Vice President for Women and Family Affairs Shahindokht Molaverdi said on a Persian-language interview with the semi-official Mehr news agency published on Feb. 23.
Molaverdi did not mention the name of the village, or elaborate on when the executions were carried out.
Sistan and Baluchistan province is located on the borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan and straddles a major narcotics trafficking route.
As a result of the executions, the male villagers’ “children are potential drug traffickers as they would want to seek revenge and provide money for their families. There is no support for these people,” Molaverdi said.
Only China executes more of its citizens than Iran.
Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special investigator on the human rights situation in Iran, said Teheran puts more people to death per capita than any other country, and the majority of executions do not conform to international laws banning the death penalty for juveniles and non-violent offenders.
Shaheed said 69 percent of executions during the first six months of 2015 were reportedly for drug-related offenses.
The influx of drugs has also led to a large increase in drug abuse in Iran, officials say.
“Society is responsible for the families of those executed,” Molaverdi said.
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