Brody's Notes... Iran To Execute Two Young Men For Homosexuality

An Iranian Execution By Stoning In 2008 Images Smuggled Out By Human Rights Activists- Released By Reuters

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) JAN 18 | According to a source at the office of the European Union's High Representative for the EU's Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, the news reports circulated by the International Committee Against Stoning regarding the impending execution of two young men in the Kurdistan provincial city of Piranshahr, in northwest Iran, set for Friday, January 21st, have been confirmed.

The two Kurdish Iranian nationals listed by their first names only of Ayub, age 20, and Mosleh, 21 years old, are scheduled to die in an execution by stoning in the city of Piranshahr in the province of Kurdistan. The two young men are currently imprisoned in the city of Orumieh.
The pair were accused of filming themselves engaging in a homosexual tryst. Additionally, headshot pictures of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and religious Iman, the Supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, were incorporated into the film pasted over a donkey and loaded onto their mobile telephones.

This film fell into the hands of the regime’s religious agents in Piranshahr who immediately ordered the young men’s execution by stoning to instill fear according to sources.

News of the sentence which originated from a Kurdish language newspaper, and was distributed by The International Committee Against Stoning, which had launched the worldwide campaign against the stoning of another Iranian, Sakineh Ashtiani, for adultery last year.

Iranian LGBT activists and human rights organizations have reported a number of other death sentences for homosexuality in the past two years. However the Iranian government maintains that “most of these individuals have been charged for forcible sodomy or rape.” The original newspaper report claimed that the men had raped another man.

Soheila Vahdati, an independent human rights worker for Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Iranian Queer Organization based in San Francisco, said: 

“They don’t differentiate between rape and homosexual acts. As well, there is a culture of shame. The families won’t defend their loved ones from this brutal punishment.”

“We are very concerned even though we haven’t got all the details. We’ll try to save their lives but unfortunately Iran has quickly executed people in the past.” 

Judges order execution by stoning under a 1983 law detailing offences proscribed by God, and then under the general Islamic penal code. Some senior Shia Muslim Iranian clerics have spoken out against stoning.

The International Committee Against Stoning have urged “the young people of Piranshahr to hasten to the aid of Ayub and Mosleh and declare that they will not permit this tragedy to occur.”