ntalwar said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Asgari_and_Ayaz_Marhoni
Consensus now seems to be that homosexuality was not the primary motivation for executing the two teenagers. In March 2006 Dutch Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk said that it was now clear "that there is no question of executions or death sentences based solely on the fact that a defendant is gay", adding that homosexuality was never the primary charge against people.[2]
According to the immigration minister the Iranian government had made it clear that the teenagers were not hanged because they were homosexual but because they were found guilty of the abduction and rape of a minor.[3]
this is a slightly contraversial issue, mostly due to the difficulty of getting accurate information out of Iran, but American and British gay groups have been on this since the beginning and it has always been maintained that they were executed for having gay sex, and the rape of the minor was tacked on after the fact.
i love wikipedia, but it's not the best source for hard news.
some other links to check out:
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/07/iran_executes_2.html
[q]IRAN'S STATE MURDER OF GAYS
Victims framed for kidnap and rape
“Deportation would be a death sentence”
Asylum urged for gay Iranian refugees
London – 20 April 2006
The Iranian government is executing gay and bisexual men under the cover of rape and kidnapping charges, according to a major new investigation by Simon Forbes of the UK-based gay and lesbian human rights group OutRage!
Mr Forbes's nine-month investigation, published today by OutRage!, is based on information gathered from sources inside Iran. His research reveals:
* Lynchings by Iran's security forces, and ‘honour killings' by families in the south western province of Khuzestan
* Secret hangings in prison
* The method of hanging is designed to cause slow, agonising strangulation
* Internet entrapment of gay Iranians using foreign-based online gay dating agencies
* A pattern of framing gay people on charges of kidnap, rape and paedophilia, as the following five sample cases suggest:
* The Gorgan case where two men were publicly hanged for Lavaat (sodomy) in November 2005
* Details of the Kermanshah case where three men were hanged in prison in November 2005 for sodomy that was alleged to have taken the form of the kidnap and rape of a younger male
* The Arak case of two men sentenced to death for sodomy in August 2005, which also involved the alleged kidnap and rape of a younger male, the son of an officer
* Two cases of public execution for sodomy in Mashhad in December 2004 and July 2005 that involved suspiciously similar charges
* Claims of rape are sometimes made to save the family's honour or to save the passive partner from execution, and are part of an Iranian government propaganda offensive to scapegoat and demonise gay people
* Comparisons with Saudi Arabia, where it is also suggested that bogus rape charges are levelled against gay men
* Hypocrisy of the mullah's attitudes towards the abuse of young girls, the rape of both males and females in custody, and widespread sodomy in religious colleges
http://www.petertatchell.net/
[/q]