London, Apr. 15 - Iran executed at least 317 people in 2007, a prominent international human rights organisation said on Tuesday.

Iran had the second-highest number of executions per capital, Amnesty International said in its yearly statistics, Death Sentences and Executions in 2007.

Only China, with a much larger population, executed more people than Iran, the report said.

The group highlighted the case of three individuals executed in Iran for crimes allegedly committed when they were minors. "Mohammad Mousawi (16 years old at the time of the offence), Sa’id Quanbar Zahi (17 years old at the time of the execution), Makwan Moloudzadeh (13 at the time of the offence) were executed in Iran on 22 April, 27 May and 4 December respectively", the report said.

The figure of 317 was considerably higher than the 177 number of executions that the group had said had been carried out in Iran in 2006.

The group said that the true number of people executed in Iran was believed to be higher than that reported.

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