The clerical regime is removed from the black list while its leaders have accumulated enormous wealth in the past two decades through sale of drugs. They run many international drug trafficking networks actively engaged in transferring drugs from Asia to Europe. In recent years, the clerical regime has set up a large number of laboratories in different cities across Iran to produce heroin.
By encouraging addiction among young people, the mullahs try to prevent them from engaging in activities in opposition to the clerics' repressive rule in the country. Addicting political prisoners in order to break their resistance is also among the most sinister methods of the mullahs' regime.
It is not without reason that despite massive executions of drug smugglers not affiliated with the regime's factions, the number of addicts has continuously increased. According to the official statistics, there are at least five million addicts in Iran today, 60 per cent of whom are under 30 years of age.
In a speech to a gathering in Ilam (western Iran) 10 days ago, Deputy Interior Minister for State Security and Disciplinary Affairs, Gholam Hossein Bolandian acknowledged that drug distribution in Iran has risen over the past years, reported the Qods daily on November 25, 1998.
The number of students addicted to drugs doubled last year compared to the previous year, wrote Jomhouri Islami, on August 9. The head of the State Prisons Organization acknowledged that 60 per cent of the country's prisoners, i.e. 96,000 prisoners, are held on drug charges, according to IRNA on October 12.
Two months ago, the clerical regime's Prosecutor General announced that the punishment for drug traffickers had increased 10-fold and that those possessing 30 grams of heroin or five kilos of opium will be sentenced to death. (State television, September 30, 1998)
These painful realities, about which relevant US officials are aware, show that the removal of the clerical regime from the list of countries producing or trafficking drugs is politically motivated and designed to appease the mullahs' religious, terrorist dictatorship. The NCR calls on all human rights activists and all those combating drug trafficking to oppose this decision by the US Administration which will give freer rein to the mullahs to expand their drug smuggling networks and take greater toll among youths both in Iran and in other countries, particularly in Europe.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
December 8, 1998
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