Why there are no gays in Iran
An 19-year old Iranian who dared identify as gay nervously awaits a court ruling that he says could lead to his execution. “Mehdi” was studying English in Britain, when he says he learned his boyfriend back in Tehran had been arrested, charged with sodomy and hanged in 2006. But before the boyfriend was killed, Mehdi says, authorities forced his partner to name past lovers.
Days later, Mehdi’s family claims, Iranian police showed up at their Tehran family home with an arrest warrant. In an asylum claim submitted to Britain’s Home Office, Medhi said if he returns to Iran, he too would be executed.
Britain’s Home Office didn’t buy it. It turned him down – then Mehdi fled for Canada before British officials could deport him to Tehran. But he was stopped by border police in Germany and sent to the Netherlands.
He now sits in a Dutch detention center, where he waits for a judge to decide whether to grant him asylum, or carry out a British extradition request to send him to the U.K….
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