TEHRAN, Iran (AFP) — Iranian authorities executed four people on Wednesday who had been convicted of selling contaminated bootleg alcohol that fatally poisoned 17 people last year, the judiciary said.

“The death penalty against four defendants in the case of poisoning caused by the consumption of alcoholic beverages was carried out at Karaj central prison,” the judiciary’s Mizan News Agency said.

The defendants had been sentenced to death in September 2023 for selling the contaminated alcohol that killed at least 17 people and put more than 190 others into hospital in the province of Alborz, west of Tehran.

Iran carries out the highest number of executions a year after China, according to human rights groups including Amnesty International.

Iran banned the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages after the Islamic revolution of 1979.

Bootleg alcohol sales have boomed on the black market ever since, with toxic methanol occasionally contaminating the natural ethanol resulting in mass poisonings.

The latest case reported by Iranian media resulted in the deaths of some 40 people in northern Iran in recent months.

Five people have been arrested over the poisonings, four of them on capital charges, Mizan reported early this month.

Only recognized Christian minorities in Iran, such as the country’s Armenian community, are allowed to produce and consume alcohol, but discreetly and behind closed doors in order not to offend Islamic sensibilities.