The World : 9,000 in Jail, Iranian Says

About 9,000 members of opposition groups are in Iranian jails, an Iranian official said in a Tehran Radio broadcast, monitored in Nicosia, Cyprus. Davoud Karimi, the top drug-enforcement officer in the Komiteh revolutionary police, said Iranian jails also hold about 40,000 drug addicts or smugglers. Iranian officials are usually tight-lipped about the number of prisoners in Iranian jails. Meanwhile, an explosives-packed car blew up on a Tehran expressway, injuring two people and damaging several vehicles. The blast was the second-such incident in Iran’s capital in three days. Police have found and defused two other devices in the past few days, the agency said. It was not immediately clear who is planting the devices.