Iran’s regime executed two men based on anti-gay charges

Iran’s regime frequently uses the charge of sodomy to impose the death penalty on gays and lesbians.

The Islamic Republic of Iran continued its lethal homophobic policy, executing on Sunday two men based on its anti-gay Sharia law system.

The two Iranian men, Mehrdad Karimpou and Farid Mohammadi, were killed in the Maragheh prison in northwestern Iran, according to the organization Human Rights Network in Iran. The men were arrested six years ago.

Iran’s regime frequently uses the charge of sodomy to impose the death penalty on gays and lesbians. According to a 2008 British Wikipedia dispatch, Iran’s theocratic state executed between 4,000 and 6,000 gays and lesbians since the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

Human Rights Network in Iran said the Iranian regime-controlled media has not reported on the executions of the two men based on the country’s anti-gay law.

“The two Iranian men were executed today after being found guilty of charges related to homosexuality," Iran Human Rights Monitor tweeted. "Human rights websites identified the men as 32-year-old Mehrdad Karimpour & Farid Mohammadi. They were arrested 6 years ago & were in Maragheh prison until their execution.”

"The Ayatollah regime in Iran just executed two gay men for the crime of sodomy in Iran," The Iranian-American journalist Karmel Melamed tweeted. He added their pictures and asked, "Where's the outrage from US Secretary of State Antony Bliken, GLAAD [an NGO that promotes LGBTQ acceptance] & other LGBT groups in the US to this horrific crime?!"

Peter Tatchell, an LGBTQ+ and human-rights campaigner, told The Jerusalem Post: "Iran is one of a dozen Muslim-majority countries and regions that enforce Sharia law and impose the death penalty for homosexuality. The execution of these men follows a long-standing regime policy of the state-sanctioned murder of gay men, often on disputed charges after unfair trials that have been condemned by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The British activist Tatchell said: "The international community must impose Magnitsky sanctions on the regime officials, judges and prison staff who authorized these executions - and on those responsible for the many other human rights cases of abuse in Iran, including the hanging of peaceful Kurdish, Baluch and Ahwazi Arab activists on fake terrorism charges."

Sheina Vojoudi, an Iranian dissident who fled to Germany to escape persecution, told The Jerusalem Post: "The prisons of the Islamic Republic is full of people who have committed no crime and the leaked footage of Evin prison proved that. The Islamic Republic in Iran is based on injustice, to make it more clear I want to remind you of Saeed Toosi, the prominent Quran reciter and teacher who's Ali Khamenei's favorite Quran reciter. He was accused by 19 of his former underage Quran students of sexual molestation and rape but he had the Supreme Leader's protection and his case was ignored by the authorities."

Vojoudi, who has blasted the Iranian regime's anti-LGBTQ policies, added: "Why someone like him who rapes children can continue his career freely but the transgenders and homosexuals must be arrested or executed? There's no justice and humanity in the Islamic Republic. The democratic countries and the free world maybe should start to think about their relations with the Islamic Republic."

The new president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, declared in an anti-gay tirade in 2014 that same-sex relations are “nothing but savagery.”

In December, the 6G Iranian and Lesbian and Transgender Network reported on its website that an Iranian lesbian named Sarah was arrested in the province of West Azerbaijan while seeking to cross the border into Turkey.

Last year, a leading Iranian regime theater director Ghotbedin Sadeghi delivered a homophobic rant against Iran’s persecuted LGBTQ community in March, prompting outrage from activists over his anti-gay rhetoric.

In January, 2019, The Jerusalem Post reported that Iran’s regime publicly hanged a man on homosexuality charges.

In 2016, The Jerusalem Post reported Iran’s regime had executed a gay adolescent that year – the first confirmed execution of someone convicted as a juvenile in the Islamic Republic.

Source: jpost.com, Benjamin Weinthal, January 30, 2022

Iran executes 2 gay men over sodomy charges

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran has executed two gay men who were convicted on charges of sodomy and spent six years on death row, a rights group reported.

Homosexuality is illegal in Iran, considered one of the most repressive places in the world for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

According to a report on Sunday by the Human Rights Activists News Agency, the two men were identified as Mehrdad Karimpour and Farid Mohammadi.

They were sentenced to death for “forced sexual intercourse between two men” and hanged in a prison in the northwestern city of Maragheh, some 500 kilometers (310 miles) from the capital, Tehran.

Last July, two other men were executed on the same charges in Maragheh, the group said. It added that last year, Iran executed 299 people, including four convicted of crimes committed as children.

Last October, the U.N.’s independent investigator on human rights in Iran, Javaid Rehman told the U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee that Iran continues to implement the death penalty “at an alarming rate.”

Under Iranian law, sodomy, rape, adultery, armed robbery and murder are among crimes that can lead to the death penalty.

Source: The Associated Press, Staff, February 1, 2022

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