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| About 3,000 Iranians are imprisoned abroad: official |
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.jpg) TEHRAN – About 3,000 Iranian nationals are being held in foreign prisons, most of whom have been charged with involvement in drug trafficking, the Iranian deputy foreign minister for consular and expatriates’ affairs said on Wednesday.
“80 percent of the Iranians imprisoned abroad have been charged with drug trafficking,” Hassan Qashqavi told IRNA.
“Each year, about one-third of the Iranian prisoners abroad are released thanks to the efforts of the Foreign Ministry, and, this year (which ends on March 20, 2014), about 800 imprisoned Iranians will be freed,” he said.
Elsewhere in the interview, the Iranian deputy minister commented on the remarks that Indonesian Ambassador to Tehran Dian Wirengjurit recently made in which he claimed that 5,000 Iranians were being held in detention centers in Indonesia for attempting to enter Australia illegally through the southeastern Asian country and that 47 Iranian prisoners in Indonesia had been sentenced to death.
Qashqavi said according to the figures provided by the Iranian diplomatic apparatus, the number of Iranians being held in Indonesia are less than the figure given by the Indonesian ambassador.
“The Foreign Ministry has asked our country’s embassy in Jakarta to investigate the statistics provided by the Indonesian ambassador,” he said.
EP/PA
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