Should drug traffickers receive the death penalty?

Iran Executed 834 People In 2023

Iran executed a “staggering” total of at least 834 people last year, the highest number since 2015 as capital punishment surged in the Islamic republic, two rights groups said yesterday.The number of executions, which Iran has carried out by hanging in recent years, was up about 43 percent from 2022.It marked only the second time in two decades that more than 800 executions were recorded in a year, after 972 executions in 2015, Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and Paris-based Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) said in the joint report.“Of particular concern is the dramatic escalation in the number of drug-related executions in 2023, which rose to 471 people, more than 18 times higher than the figures recorded in 2020,” the report said.Members of ethnic minorities, notably the Sunni Baluch from the southeast of Iran, are “grossly overrepresented amongst those executed” on drug-related charges, it said.At least 167 members of the Baluch minority were executed in total, accounting for 20 percent of the total executions last year, even though the minority accounts for only about 5 percent of Iran’s population.Saudi Arabia executed 100 people in 2023.The United States executed 24 people in 2023.

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Mexican Drug Cartels Expand Under "Hugs, Not Bullets" Policy

Gangs affiliated with Mexico’s two largest drug cartels—battling to the death over market share—have grown in number and influence since President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in 2018. He eased up under a policy he called “hugs, not bullets.” Arrests by Mexico’s national guard, created under López Obrador to replace federal police, fell to 2,800 in 2022 from 21,700 in 2018, according to the national statistics agency.More than 200 criminal gangs are engaged in turf wars compared with 76 in 2010, according to the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank that studies violent conflicts worldwide. Most of the disputes involve the Sinaloa or Jalisco cartels, among the world’s largest criminal organizations and the top traffickers of fentanyl—the low-cost, high-margin synthetic opioid that kills tens of thousands of Americans a year.Criminal gangs behind the U.S. drug epidemic are seeing accelerated growth, commanding greater control over more territory in Mexico, where they are largely free to murder rivals, neuter police, seize property and strong-arm municipalities into giving them public contracts.In December, farmers from a village in the state of Mexico attacked local cartel members with machetes and sickles, revolting against demands they each pay as much as $600 to work their own land, authorities said. The fight killed 10 gang members and four farmers.

Ecuador Declares War on Gang After TV Attack

Ecuador's president has ordered that criminal gangs be "neutralized" after days of violence culminated in an attack on a television studio.Masked gunmen broke into public television channel TC's live studio during a broadcast, forcing staff to the floor.Police made 13 arrests following the attack, which injured two employees.At least 10 people have been killed since a 60-day state of emergency began in Ecuador on Monday.The emergency was declared after a notorious gangster vanished from his prison cell. It is unclear whether the incident at the TV studio in Guayaquil was related to the disappearance from a prison in the same city of the boss of the Choneros gang, Adolfo Macías Villamar, or Fito as he is better known.President Noboa said on Tuesday that an "internal armed conflict" now existed in the country and he was mobilising the armed forces to carry out "military operations to neutralise" what he called "transnational organised crime, terrorist organisations and belligerent non-state actors"