Illegal immigrants in Iran are a serious threat to public security and will face prosecution in the nation's hard-line revolutionary courts, top judge Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi-Shahrudi said Sunday.
He said the absence of an extensive code of laws to cope with illegal immigration "will no longer be accepted" and was no bar to trying those without vaild entry papers, the state IRNA news agency reported.
In a letter to the revolutionary courts, he said illegals from now on would be tried according to Iran's strict Islamic sharia law because their presence in the country is "working against public security."
He said they could be "used by hostile states or counter-revolutionary groups for espionage activities against Iran."
According to official statistics, 2.6 million foreigners are in Iran illegally. There are an estimated 1.4 million Afghans in the country, half of whom are believed not to have valid visas.
Around 500 illegal Afghan immigrants enter the country every day -- TEHRAN (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
