Arrested Iranians Suspected of Being Gay Face Death Penalty
Iranian Queer Organization (IRQO) is reporting that Iran will set a date this week for hearings into the cases of 17 to 20 people detained during a raid on a party in the Iranian city of Kermanshah described as a “network of homosexuals and satanists.” A total of 75 people were arrested during the raid, IRQO’s Farrokh Nikmaram said.
Buzzfeed reports:
Further details remain murky. Nikmaram said his group did not know exactly how many people would be charged following the Oct. 9 raid by forces associated with the Revolutionary Guard, and what they would be charged with. Charges of homosexual relations could carry the death penalty.
To make matters more complicated, it also remains unclear if those detained were gay or not. Nikmaram said the raid could be politically motivated, having nothing to do with the men’s identities or what was taking place at the party. The fact that those arrested were described as “satanists” by the authorities also suggests the attendees may have been targeted because it was believed that some may belong to a minority religious sect with many adherents among Kurds, Ahl-e Haqq.
Nikmaram expressed concern that those arrested may be forced under torture to say they are gay, which could condemn them to death. “We are extremely worried that some of the detainees might have been forced, under torture (both physical and mental), to confess they are gay,” Nikmaram said.
The sodomy law was modified in 2012 so that an unmarried man who penetrates another is only subject to 100 lashes, while one who consents to penetration carries the death penalty in all cases. But if those involved face sodomy charges, this kind of technicality may not matter given Iran’s history of prosecuting sexual crimes.
A 2010 report by Human Rights Watch found that charges of sodomy are rarely brought in isolation, but coupled with other offenses that often carry the death penalty on their own. These trials are often held in secret and judges routinely ignore proper legal procedure.
In April, the Islamic Republic’s campaign publicly executed an Iranian man by hanging. Iran’s judiciary imposed the death penalty on a man identified only as “CH. M” in Marvdasht, Fars province, on April 19 “for allegedly engaging in ‘sodomy’ with another man.”
The following month, four other men were sentenced to death for sodomy in the Iranian town of Choram.
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Activists in Iran say that at least four other men have been hanged for homosexuality this year in Iran, though the reason for the punishment of some men was not identified to international human rights watchers, according to the Advocate.
A disturbing incident from 2007 highlights the brutality and cruelty Iran’s homosexual community faces. Mererhetoric.com reports:
It’s because they’re trying to kill them all. These are two gay teenagers who were kept in a cage, publicly humiliated, gruesomely hung, and left to dangle in front of the macabre crowd. That way they could serve as a warning to anyone who would dare be homosexual in Iran’s Islamic utopia :
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