Azernews.Az

Some 200 Azerbaijani citizens are detained in Iran every month over drug smuggling and deported, Iranian ambassador in Baku Nasser Hamidi Zare says. "We pardon these individuals and send them back," he told a news conference on Tuesday. International groups and Azerbaijani officials have repeatedly termed Iran as a country through which narcotics are smuggled to other parts of the world via Azerbaijan. Hamidi Zare said there was no need to inflate the issue. He argued that the number of Iranian citizens detained in the neighboring country is much smaller than that of Azerbaijani nationals nabbed in Iran. "We simply neither prosecute these persons nor divulge this [such cases] to the press." The ambassador said Azerbaijan had no right to complain of Iran over drug smuggling. "Thousands of tons of drugs are transported to the West, in particular, from neighboring states. We are fighting this and thousands of Iranian nationals have perished in the process. It is thanks to our struggle that our neighbors, including Azerbaijan, are able to breath freely," the diplomat said. He said "a drug war" of international scale is being waged on Iran. The war, he said, is being spearheaded "by ungodly forces". Hamidi Zare noted that after the US invasion of Afghanistan, drug production in this country has doubled. "These drugs are taken to Europe through Afghanistan's neighbors and Iran," he added. The Iranian ambassador was appointed to the post in early March. Hamidi Zare had previously served as consul general in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.