After six years on death row, two gay men in Iran have been executed.
Mehrdad Karimpour and Farid Mohammadi were executed by hanging in a prison in Maragheh, in the northwestern province of Iran, about 310 miles from Tehran, after they had been charged with sodomy.
They were condemned to death for “forced sexual intercourse between two men.”
The identities of the men were confirmed in a report published on Sunday by the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). It went on to say that state-run media in Iran had yet to report the killings.
The Jerusalem Post said that Iran’s prisons are “full of people who have committed no crime,” according to Sheina Vojoudi, who fled Iran and traveled to Germany.
According to LGBTQ+ rights activist Peter Tatchell, the execution is part of a “long-standing regime policy of 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 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.”
Karmel Melamed, an Iranian-American journalist, requested that the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, respond with ‘outrage’ in a tweet.
He said: “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 U.S. to this horrific crime?!”
Alireza Fazeli Monfared, a 20-year-old Iranian woman who identified as lesbian and non-binary, was kidnapped and murdered by numerous male relatives in Ahvaz, Khuzestan province.
Amnesty International wrote on the assassination, “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 further noted that two other males were hanged in Maragheh in July 2021 on the same allegations as Mr. Karimpour and Mr. Mohammadi, and that Iran executed 299 people last year, including four convicted of crimes committed as juveniles.
Iran sentenced 85 people to death in 2021.
