Iran Executes 21 Year Old Accused Of Gay Sex When He Was 13
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: December 5, 2007 - 3:00 pm ET
(New York City) The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission
said Wednesday that a 21 year old man spared from execution only 10 days ago
was hanged this morning.
On November 15 Iran's Chief Justice halted the execution of Makvan
Mouloodzadeh and ordered a new trial.
Mouloodzadeh had been charged with having sex with another male when the
accused was only 13 years old.
At his original trial no witness ever accused Mouloodzadeh of rape. Instead,
the prosecution witnesses all told the court that their statements during the
investigation were either untruthful or coerced.
Nevertheless Mouloodzadeh was found guilty and sentenced to death. The
Supreme Court upheld his death sentence in August
Chief Justice Ayatollah Seyed Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi in staying the
execution described the death sentence to be in violation of Islamic teachings,
the religious decrees of high-ranking Shiite clerics, and the law of the land.
Shahrudi's ruling sent the case to the Special Supervision Bureau of the
Iranian Justice Department, a designated group of judges who are responsible
for reviewing and ordering retrials of flawed cases flagged by the Iranian
Chief Justice.
However, the judges decided to ratify the original court's ruling and ordered
the local authorities to carry out the execution.
Mouloodzadeh was executed in Kermanshah Central Prison at 5 a.m. Wednesday
morning.
Neither Mr. Mouloodzadeh's family or his lawyer were told about the execution
until after it occurred, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights
Commission said in a statement.
"This is a shameful and outrageous travesty of justice and international
human rights law," said Paula Ettelbrick, IGLHRC's executive director.
"How many more young Iranians have to die before the international community
takes action?"
Under Islamic law sodomy is a capital crime punishable by public lashings or
hanging.
Some international gay rights groups believe that more than 4,000 lesbians
and gay men have been executed since the Ayatollahs seized power in 1979. The
government in Tehran has repeatedly denied the reports.
Last month it was learned that during a meeting between British and Iranian
politicians a high ranking Iranian cabinet minister acknowledged for the first
time that the Islamic state upholds the death penalty for homosexuality.
The disclosure was in marked contrast to remarks in September by President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a speech at Columbia University when he declared
there were no homosexuals in Iran. "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like you
do in your country. We do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told
you that we have it," Ahmadinejad said.
©365Gay.com 2007
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