By BTL Staff
IRAN – Two gay teenagers were publicly executed in Iran last week for the 'crime' of homosexuality.
On July 19 Mahmoud Asgari, 16, and Ayaz Marhoni, 18, were hanged publicly in the city of Mashhad on charges of raping younger boys.
Gay rights groups such as the London-based gay rights group Outrage! and Iranian opposition groups suggested the rape allegations were actually trumped-up charges aimed to undermine public sympathy for the teenagers.
According to Outrage! the boys admitted, possibly under torture, to having gay sex but claimed in their defense that most young boys had sex with each other and that they were not aware that homosexuality was punishable by death.
The youths were hanged in Edalat (Justice) Square in the city of Mashhad, in north east Iran. They were sentenced to death by Court No. 19.
According to Outrage!, Iran enforces Islamic Sharia law, which dictates the death penalty for gay sex.
According to a July 25 Reuters report, the teenagers were held in prison for 14 months and severely beaten with 228 lashes prior to being executed.
"The length of their detention suggests that they committed the so-called offences more than a year earlier, when they were possibly around the age of 16," the report said.
Ruhollah Rezazadeh, the lawyer of the youngest boy, had appealed that he was too young to be executed. But the Supreme Court in Tehran ordered him to be hanged.
On July 22, The Human Rights Campaign, a Washington based LGBT rights group, sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asking her to condemn the execution, as well as other human rights abuses against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people worldwide.
"Atrocities committed by foreign governments against all people must be condemned swiftly and forcefully by the world's greatest democracy," said HRC President Joe Solmonese.
Under the Iranian penal code, girls as young as nine and boys as young as 15 can be hanged. Under certain conditions, capital punishment is imposed for those engaging in illegal sexual relations.
According to Outrage!, three other young gay Iranians are being hunted by the police, but they have gone into hiding and cannot be found. If caught, they will also face execution.
"This is just the latest barbarity by the Islamo-fascists in Iran," said Peter Tatchell of OutRage!
International human rights activists and Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi have joined in condemning the executions.
Ebadi said her Center for the Protection of Human Rights will intensify its fight against Iran's executions of minors.
"My calls for a law clearly banning execution of under-18s has fallen on deaf ears so far but I will not give up the fight," Ebadi said.
While there are no official figures on death sentences given to minors, human rights activists say about a dozen were executed in Iran last year.
Outrage! claims that over 4,000 lesbians and gay men have been executed since the Iranian revolution of 1979.
Additional reporting provided by the Associated Press
