TEHRAN – Iranian lawmakers on Wednesday voted in favor of a motion under which minor drug offenders would face imprisonment instead of execution, IRNA reported.

147 out of 195 parliamentarians present in the Majlis voted “yes” on the single-urgency motion which would add an article to the law on drug offences.

If the motion is ratified, the drug offenders who are not charged with capital crimes would face between 25 to 30 years imprisonment as a substitute for execution and life imprisonment.

Ezatollah Yousefian, a parliamentarian from Amol, said the majority of those executed are drug traffickers. 

“And this issue has been politicized by Western countries” and the Islamic Republic has paid a “huge” price for such a law, he explained.

“In the aforementioned motion, emphasis has been put on replacing the execution of some drug traffickers with imprisonment,” the legislator pointed out.

He also questioned the usefulness of executing such large number of drug traffickers.

Under Iranian law, those who commit capital crimes are regarded as “Mofsed-e-filarz” (corrupt of the earth), and would face severe punishments, including death penalty.

In March 2016, the United Nations Human Rights Council said that at least 966 people were put to death in Iran in 2015, adding that it’s “roughly double the number executed in 2010 and 10 times as many as were executed in 2005.”

Iran, however, dismissed the report as being founded upon "incorrect information".

MH/PA