Iran police chief blames West for crime rise

AFP -- Western powers are responsible for a recent spike in crime in Iran, the state television website on Tuesday quoted police chief Esmaeel Ahmadi Moghaddam as saying.

"We are witnessing major powers present in the region organising efforts to spread crime and and a lack of security in our society," he said after being asked by deputies to explain an increase in crime in recent months.

"Drugs, alcohol, moral decadence, satellite channels and cultural assaults, all officially organised from abroad, are the main causes of crime" in Iran, Brigadier General Ahmadi Moghaddam said.

The authorities do not regularly publish statistics on crime in the Islamic republic but in recent months several cases of murder and rape have made media headlines.

Ahmadi Moghaddam also implicitly blamed the reformist opposition within the regime for the rise in violence, saying that crime "increased after the sedition" movement of 2009.

He was alluding to months of anti-government demonstrations after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009.

Ahmadi Moghaddam noted that criminal activity has decreased since the beginning of the year but that statistics were relatively low given the volume of Iran's population, officially estimated at 75 million.

He put the number of premeditated murders committed during the last Iranian year -- March 2010 to March 2011 -- at 1,277, while also confirming "800 to 900 reported rapes" over the past four years.