Iran hangs three drug traffickers

Iran hanged three men convicted of drug trafficking at a prison in the central city of Isfahan, the state-run daily Iran reported on Wednesday.                                            The newspaper named the three as Qodrat, Khan-Mohammad and Mostafa, and said they were separately convicted of trafficking and distributing different kinds of narcotic drugs.                                            Drug trafficking, murder, rape, adultery, armed robbery and apostasy are punishable by death in Iran under the sharia law practised since the 1979 Islamic revolution.                                            "Their verdicts, which had been issued by the court, were approved by the supreme court ... and were carried out in Isfahan''s central prison," provincial judiciary chief Gholamreza Ansari was quoted as saying by the daily.                                            Iran is often accused of abuses by rights groups and Western governments, but Tehran dismisses the criticism and accuses the West of double standards and hypocrisy.