October 5, 2009: a man was hanged for adultery and homosexuality, human rights lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei reported. Mostafaei wrote in an open letter that his client Rahim Mohammadi was hanged in the prison of Tabriz (northest of Iran). Neither he nor Mr. Mohammadi’s family had been informed prior to the execution. Mr. Mohammadi’s wife, Kobra Babai, was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery and could be stoned to death in the near future.
The lawyer explained that Rahim Mohammadi and Kobra Babai, married for approximately 16 years and with a 11 year old daughter, were living in conditions of extreme poverty and they were forced to rely on economic assistance from state organisations. Some employees of these organisations allegedly offered further money to the man to have sexual relations with Kobra, and he accepted. The woman was therefore made to prostitute with about forty men, according to public statements by lawyer Mostafai. She was condemned to stoning for this.
In a first trial Mohammadi was only sentenced for adultery, a sentenced that carries execution by stoning. He was then also found guilty of homosexual relations (Lavat) with a neighbour who is a self confessed criminal. This charge carries hanging as the method of execution.
“We all know that stoning is a sentence which is not easy to carry because it is not practiced in other countries, and because it will lead to unwanted national and international reactions,” Mohammad Mostafaei explained. “In order to carry out the death sentence in an easy manner, the court found him guilty on Lavat charges – charges that he denied and that were retracted by the person who had brought them up.”
Rahim Mohammadi was flogged severely a few days before his execution and was hanged while his body was crushed because of the lashes he had received.
- source – article from Hands Off Cain Website – sent to this writer by international LGBT activist and writer Peter Tatchell (link) who also writes for the international website Gays Without Borders.
(New York, Monday September 25, 2007 – Press Release from IGLHRC) - Upon monitoring the Iranian press reaction to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech and comments at the Monday forum hosted by Columbia University, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) discovered an odd disparity. The English version of the President’s official website (http://www.president.ir/en/) provides a full and complete transcript of his speech and the Question & Answer segment where he claimed that homosexuality does not exist in Iran. However, the Persian-language transcript has excised both the question about treatment of lesbians and gay men in Iran and President Ahmadinejad’s soon to be legendary response.
The President’s website purportedly provides the authoritative transcripts of his speeches and is relied upon by the news media in Iran. To date, not a single Persian-language media outlet in Iran – including Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, and the semi-independent news agencies, ISNA, Mehrrnews and Farsnews, and the Wednesday morning newspapers – has reported on the President’s comments.
After President Ahmadinejad’s speech on Monday, the Professor John H. Coatsworth moderated a Question & Answer session. Among the questions was why Iran has executed citizens who are homosexuals, to which the President responded “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals, like in your country. We don’t have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have it.”
“The first reaction of many of us was to join in the astonished response to President Ahmadinejad’s clearly outrageous view that no lesbian or gay people live in Iran,” said Paula Ettelbrick, Executive Director of IGLHRC. “But the whitewashing of his comments from the eyes and ears of most Iranian citizens speaks to something more troubling. His denial attempts to simply erase from public view the lives of men and women who face regular abuse in his country. Perhaps he knows he could not credibly get away with such a denial among his own people.”
International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission
