Background
Under some interpretations, Shari'a (Islamic Law) permits the death penalty for homosexual acts, but the Convention on the Rights of the Child, of which Iran is a signatory, forbids the execution of juveniles. According to Asgari's lawyer, Rohollah Razaz Zadeh, "death sentences handed to children by Iranian courts are supposed to be commuted to five years in jail", but the Supreme Court in Tehran upheld the death sentence. The ages of the boys remain unclear, with some sources claiming they were fourteen and sixteen at the time of their arrests and sixteen and eighteen when executed.
On July 19, 2005, the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) posted an article in Persian describing the execution of the two youths. Its headline stated that they had been executed for "lavat beh onf", which means "sodomy/homosexual sex by force" and is a legal term used for rape of men by men. Earlier on the morning of the executions, Quds, the local daily newspaper in Mashhad, published a report on the executions. It gave a detailed account of how the two had raped a 13-year-old boy, and included statements by the father of the rape victim.
The ISNA article became the center of the dispute. The gay-rights group, OutRage!, led by Peter Tatchell, published its own free translation of the article on July 21.
Read more about this topic: Mahmoud Asgari And Ayaz Marhoni
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