These comments are absolutely false and only intended to circumvent increasing international pressure for persisting flagrant human rights abuses in Iran.
While the total number of announced executions in all of 1995 were 81 cases, in the first six months of 1996, the mullahs have already announced the execution of 70 people.
The official also claimed that "seven convicted drug-smugglers hanged publicly last week were the first drug offenders to be executed since March 1995." This, too, is false. State-controlled newspapers reported the execution of two drug-traffickers on May 6, in Birjand, northeast Iran. On April 17, Kayhan, quoting Morteza Moqtada'i, the prosecutor general, reported the death sentence for a "drug-smuggler, upheld by the supreme court.
Moreover, the clerical regime has escalated the secret execution of political prisoners. In previous months, families of scores of political prisoners who went to prisons to ask about the fate of their children, were given the news of their execution by prison officials.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran - Paris
July 22, 1996
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