Human rights advocacy group Amnesty International says Ghanaians and other African nationals were wrongly executed in Iran in 2010. In its latest report Amnesty International says at least one Ghanaian was confirmed killed last year in a mass execution at the Vakilabad Prison in Iran’s second largest city of Mashhad, in the north-east of the country. The report dubbed Addicted to Death: Execution for drug offences in Iran paints a grim picture of human right violations in Iranian prisons. It says Iranian authorities had reported the arrest of 85 Africans from Nigeria, Tanzania and Ghana in March 2007 but did not make public their alleged executions. A Ghanaian by name Akwasi Aquwabe is said to have been killed in the Vakilabad Prison but Ghanaian diplomats were not given any notice of his execution. The killing of drug suspects is said to have soared after Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatolla Khomeini instructed the country’s judiciary to speed up the punishment of criminals. "Executions of alleged drugs offenders have rocketed in Iran since mid-2010. They have continued at a high rate, with the Judiciary announcing a crackdown on drug trafficking in October 2010 and following amendments to the Anti-Narcotics Law that came into force in January 2011. Many of those convicted have been killed in secret mass executions inside prisons, sometimes with their family and lawyer having little or no warning. Most, if not all, were condemned to death after grossly unfair trials, including being denied access to a lawyer and having no right to appeal. Among them were three women – all mothers solely responsible for dependent children - arrested in January 2009 on suspicion of drug trafficking, interrogated without a lawyer, tried before a Revolutionary Court in Hamedan, and sentenced to death without a right of appeal," it said. Amnesty International believes that more than two hundred individuals were executed in Vakilabad Prison in 2010. All but a handful are believed to have been convicted of drug-related offences. Executions in Vakilabad Prison have continued this year, with at least 144 individuals killed in September alone. It’s however not known how many of these were Africans or Ghanaians.