IRAN: 17 PRISONERS HANGED AT VAKILABAD PRISON

September 11, 2016: 17 prisoners sentenced to death on drug related charges were reportedly hanged at Mashhad's Vakilabad Prison (Razavi Khorasan province, northwestern Iran).
"There are currently about 400 prisoners in Vakilabad Prison who are on death row for drug related offenses, and their execution sentences have been confirmed," a close source tells Iran Human Rights.
Close sources say these 400 prisoners are all relatively new individuals who were arrested by Iranian authorities within the last two or three years. 
The hundreds of other death row prisoners who were detained in Vakilabad prior to this have reportedly been executed. Iran Human Rights (IHR) has previously reported about the secret executions of several hundred prisoners in the Vakilabad prison.
Iranian official sources, including the Judiciary and the media, have been silent about these 17 executions. 
In 2015, 61% of the executions carried out in Iran (approximately 596 executions) were not reported by Iranian official sources. (Source: Iran Human Rights, September 27, 2016)