Embassy rejects reports of Iranian drug smugglers’ execution

By Zhao Hongyi

The Iranian Embassy rejected reports circulating the past couple of weeks that nationals convicted of drug smuggling in China have been executed.

“Since three years ago, a total of 46 Iranians have been charged with trading in illegal drugs in China. Most of these people were not drug smugglers but were in fact ordinary airline passengers who were unaware o the narcotics packed in their luggage,” Iran’s Mehr News Agency quoted an embassy official as saying.

The embassy released a statement last Friday saying that “no Iranian has been arrested in the past year for drug smggling, or executed for that matter.” It said “Tehran’s embassy in Beijing is determined to defend the rights and interests of all Iranians residing in China.

The statement said a number of Iranian detainees received death sentences two years ago, but that the verdicts were still on appeal at the appellate court in Beijing. When contacted for further comment, a consul said he had no knowledge of the issue.

The embassy’s press officer Mohammad Ali Ziaei declined to comment on the “sensitive issue,” but willingly discussed another charge against Iranian nationals: an attack Tuesday against the search engiBaidu. Media reported that the site was defaced by hackers who left a message saying, “This site has been hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army.

Ziaei said the Iranian government condemned the attack and said it went against Iran’s pro-China foreign policy. “Iran condemns these actions and hopes it won’t bring any negative impact on bilateral relations,” he said, adding that perpetrators could also be foreign hackers operating from Iran.

Baidu was attacked Tuesday morning and was inaccessible for the rest of the day. Netizens said the hackers tampered with the search engine’s Domain Name System (DNS), redirecting traffic to another site. Baidu’s gineers later confirmed that the attack came from  hackers in Iran.