Iran executed 15,000 people over drug-related crimes since 1979 - report

Jalil Mohebbi, the secretary of a religious watchdog office in Iran, stated that since the 1979 Revolution, 15,000 people have been executed in the Islamic Republic over drug related crimes, Radio Farda reported on Sunday.The Iranian branch of the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty described Mohebbi as "mid-ranking clergy." According to the report, he shared the data in a presentation attended by the head of the Islamic Republic Judiciary.However, a spokesperson of the Judiciary, Parviz Esmaeili, eventually said that the number is "inaccurate" and "devoid of required precision."In 2015, deputy director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa program, Said Boumedouha, noted that, "For years, Iranian authorities have used the death penalty to spread a climate of fear in a misguided effort to combat drug trafficking, yet there is not a shred of evidence to show that this is an effective method of tackling crime."According to Amnesty, in 2018, Iran was only second to China in terms of numbers of executions, with 253 people killed. This year, 173 people had been executed by July, a report by the UN quoted by the German media outlet DW said.