Two gay men in Iran, where homosexuality is illegal, have been executed after spending six years on death row.
Mehrdad Karimpour and Farid Mohammadi were hanged in a prison in the northwestern city of Maragheh, where they had been convicted on charges of sodomy. They were sentenced to death for “forced sexual intercourse between two men”.
The men’s identities were confirmed in a report by the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). According to reports, Iran is considered one of the most repressive places in the world for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.
Sheina Vojoudi, who fled Iran and escaped to Germany, disclosed to a media outlet, The Jerusalem Post, that the country’s prisons are “full of people who have committed no crime”.
LGBTQ+ rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell, also told the publication the execution 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”.
Peter Tatchell further suggested that the international community must impose Magnitsky sanctions on the regime officials, judges, and prison staff who authorized these executions and also on those responsible for the many other human rights cases of abuse in Iran.
Iranian American journalist, Karmel Melamed, wading in the conversation in a tweet called for “outrage” from the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“The Ayatollah regime in Iran just executed two gay men for the crime of sodomy in Iran. This is Mehrdad Karimpour and Farid Mohammadi who were executed by hanging. Where’s the outrage from @StateDept @SecBlinken @glaad & other LGBT groups in the U.S. to this horrific crime?!”.
Karmel Melamed
In May, 2021, Alireza Fazeli Monfared, 20, who identified as gay and non-binary, was abducted by several male relatives and murdered in Ahvaz, Khuzestan province in Iran.
Speaking about the killing, Amnesty, an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights wrote: “LGBTI people in Iran face pervasive discrimination, live in the constant fear of harassment, arrest and criminal prosecution, and remain vulnerable to violence and persecution based on their real or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity”.
HRANA also noted that in July 2021, two other men were executed on the same charges as Mr. Karimpour and Mr. Mohammadi in Maragheh and that last year, Iran executed 299 people, including four convicted of crimes committed as children.
In 2021, Iran sentenced 85 people to death, per reports. In October last year, the UN’s independent investigator on human rights in Iran, Javaid Rehman, told the UN General Assembly’s human rights committee that the country 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.
Last year, a UN report found that in Iran “gay, bisexual and transgender children were subjected to electric shocks and the administration of hormones and strong psychoactive medications”.
Read also: Whoopi Goldberg Suspended From Talk Show Over Holocaust Comments
