“The individual involved in selling drugs would put the substances in the boxes attached to the legs of these pigeons, which were trained to deliver them to another location in Kermanshah,” Irna said, citing a local judiciary official. “Up to 100 drug-smuggling pigeons have been seized by the police.”
Pigeons are significant in Iranian culture and poetry. Pigeon racing was a popular tradition, and some in rural areas and smaller cities still participate in the sport, holding vast numbers of pigeons on rooftops or in their garden.
In May, officials in Kuwait said they had seized a pigeon carrying 178 illicit pills in a tiny backpack. Images carried by the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Rai showed a pigeon with a miniature fabric backpack attached to its back, full of pills containing ketamine. That incident took place in the city of Abdali, near the border with Iraq, suggesting pigeons were being used to smuggle drugs from there into Kuwait.
In a similar incident in 2011, police in Colombia captured a pigeon carrying 40g of marijuana and 5g of cocaine into a prison in the northern city of Bucaramanga.
Iran has mostly resorted to a punitive campaign of arrests and executions to tackle drugs. Last year, European countries funding Iran’s counter-narcotics programme threatened to cut off contributions if Iran continued to use the death penalty for drug traffickers.
According to Iran Human Rights, a Norway-based organisation monitoring Iran’s use of capital punishment, Iran carried out 239 executions in the first half of 2017, of which 129 were for drug-related offences. In mid-August, Iranmoved closer to abolishing the death penalty for some drug-trafficking offences, measures that, if approved, would save the lives of more than 5,000 inmates on death row.
According to amendments, which were passed by parliament and are awaiting approval by a constitutional body, the threshold required for a death sentence has been raised to 50kg of opium and 2kg of heroin and other addictive substances. Under existing law, possessing 5kg of opium or 30g of heroin can result in a death sentence.
At least 530 people were executed in Iran last year, more than in any other country except China.
The police raids in Kermanshah were aimed at arresting a prominent drug dealer known locally as Soosk (Cockroach). At least 2,300 people have been arrested in the past four months in the province for drug-related offences.
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