Iran hangs man for violating anti-gay laws and kidnapping two boys

Iran has publicly hanged a 31-year-old man after finding him guilty of violating its anti-gay laws and kidnapping two children.

The unnamed man was hanged on January 10 in the southern Iranian city of Kazeroon after being charged with having gay sex – a crime punishable by death under the country’s strict Sharia law.

The Iranian Student’s News Agency reported that the man had kidnapped two 15-year-old boys – although it is not immediately clear whether the gay sex charges relate to their kidnapping. 

The ISNA report said ‘the citizens of Kazeroon expressed satisfaction and thanked the judiciary.’ The statement about citizens of Kazeroon could not be independently verified. 

Alireza Nader, CEO of Washington, DC-based organization New Iran told the Jerusalem Post that homosexuals are living in ‘terror’ in Iran.

‘The LGBT community in Iran has lived in terror for the last 40 years,’ Nader said. 

‘Next time Foreign Minister Zarif speaks in Washington, the host and audience should ask him why his regime is one of the top executioner of gays in the world.’  

According to a 2008 British WikiLeaks dispatch, Iran’s mullah regime executed ‘between 4,000 and 6,000 gays and lesbians’ since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.   

Most recently, 19-year-old Hassan Afshar was hanged in Arak Prison in Iran’s Markazi Province on July 18, 2016, after he was convicted of ‘forced male-to-male anal intercourse’ in early 2015.

While In 2011, Iran’s regime executed three Iranian men after being found guilty of charges related to homosexuality. 

Ayaz Marhon (right), 18, and Mahmud Asgari (left), 16, pictured in the back of a police van before they were hanged for homosexuality in 2005 [file photo]