Mohammad-Reza Mir-Heidari, the Assistant Head of the Qom State Security Forces said in a news conference on Monday that four people were executed in Qom Prison in the past two weeks on charges of trafficking narcotics.
Mir-Heidari only mentioned the execution of these four people in the ‘sidelines’ of the news conference. The names of these four prisoners were not announced and Iranian media had not published news of these executions prior to this.
Iranian officials do not publish all executions and therefore human rights groups believe that the numbers of executions are much higher than what Iranian media announce. (Human Rights Activists in Iran, Ferdounews state-run website- Jul. 12, 2011)
