On this date in 2010, Iran hanged six in Isfahan for drug trafficking.

According to the prosecutor — the partisan voice so often the only one audible from our distance —

Five of these people were members of an organized narcotics smugling league. They used false ID cards and cars with logos belonging to the revolutionary guards (IRGC) and security forces for drug smugling. The sixth person had previously been jailed for drug trafficking and was this time arrested with 38 kilograms of opium.

Iran’s use of the death penalty, liberal in any circumstances, ramped up significantly in 2010 in the aftermath of the near-insurrectionary protests that rocked the Islamic Republic after its dubious 2009 election.

Though Iran took, and in some cases hanged, election protesters, most of its executions have been of conventional criminals … although it’s difficult to differentiate, because Iran is also known to announce more palatable drug-trafficking charges against people who are actually political prisoners.

Under either rubric, the pace alone of those executions has conveyed a terrible message from Tehran.

Part of the Themed Set: 2010.

On this day..

• 1836: Pierre François Lacenaire, Manfred of the gutter
• 1453: Stefano Porcari
• 1864: Luke Charles, ex-policeman
• 1824: John Thurtell, the Radlett murderer
• 1899: Bailer Decker, Theodore Roosevelt's first
• 1945: Karolina Juszczykowska, who couldn't say no
• 2013: Rizana Nafeek, Sri Lankan maid
• 1386: The Sow of Falaise, seeing justice done
• 1900: Louisa Josephine Jemima Masset
• Death Be Not Proud: Executed Today wins a Clio
• 1953: Marguerite Pitre, the last woman hanged in Canada
• 1980: Islamic extremists for the Grand Mosque seizure
• 1923: Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters