February 25, 2008: in the next few hours the gay Iranian youth Mehdi Kazemi will be transferred from the Netherlands to London and then deported to Iran where he risks execution for the crime of “lavat” (sodomy).
Mehdi, 19, arrived in England in November 2005 as a student. However, last year, following the refusal by the English authorities to give him political asylum, he fled to the Netherlands.
At the age of 15 in Iran, Mehdi had a relationship with another man, Parham, who was arrested for sodomy in the last few months by the Iranian authorities.
During interrogation in prison, Parham was forced, under torture, to provide the names and surnames of all the men that he had had relationships with, one of them being Mehdi.
Parham was then sentenced to death and was executed by the Iranian regime in April, 2006.
Following the execution of Parham, the Iranian police arrived at the house of Mehdi’s father in Teheran, ordering his son to be taken into custody to go before a judge, as had happened with Parham.
Hands Off Cain and the Transnational and Transparty Non Violent Radical Party ask Massimo D’Alema, Minister of Foreign Affairs, to intervene immediately and convince the UK to stop the deportation of Mehdi to Iran. This deportation is an unacceptable violation of international conventions on human rights and in particular the Convention on Refugees, of the jurisprudence of the European Court on the Rights of Man, as well as the same community rights (directive 2004/85).
Sources: radicali.it, 25/02/2008; pinknews, 19/02/2008
