Five gay activists kidnapped in Baghdad

Gay fashion store owner disappears

Two lesbians and child murdered in Najaf

Four barbers abducted from shop popular with gays

Fundamentalist death squads target queers

London and Baghdad – 6 December 2006

Five gay activists were abducted at gun-point by Iraqi police inBaghdad on 9 November. Nothing has been heard of them since then. Itis feared they may have been murdered by death squads operating underthe cover of the Iraqi police.

The kidnapped men are Amjad 27, Rafid 29, Hassan 24, Ayman 19 and Ali21. All were members of Iraq’s clandestine gay rights movement, IraqiLGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender).

“For the last few months they had been documenting the killing oflesbians and gays, relaying details of homophobic executions to ouroffice in London, and providing safe houses and support to queersfleeing the death squads,” said Ali Hili, a gay Iraqi Muslim who ishead of Iraqi LGBT and Middle East spokesperson for the British gayhuman rights group OutRage!

At the time of the police raid, the five men were holding a secretmeeting in a safe house in the al-Shaab district of Baghdad. They werecommunicating with Mr Hili.

“Suddenly there was a lot of noise, then the connection ended,”recalls Mr Hili.

Just days after these five activists were abducted, Haydar Kamel, aged35, the owner of famous men’s clothing shop in the al-Karada districtof Baghdad, was kidnapped near his home in Sadr city. The kidnapperswere members of the Mahdi army, an Islamist militia loyal tofundamentalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr.

“Haydar had previously received death threats because of rumours abouthis alleged homosexuality. For many months, he had financiallysupported several men who were in hiding after they had beenthreatened by death squads because of claims that they were gay,” saidMr Hili.

Another recent raid was on the Jar al-Qamar barber shop in theal-Karada district of Baghdad. It was popular with gay men, which isprobably the reason it was targeted. All four employees were arrestedand taken away by the Iraqi police. They have disappeared.

It is feared that these 10 kidnapped men have been summarilyexecuted.

“These disappearances are the latest ‘sexual cleansing’ operationsmounted by extremist Islamist death squads, many of whom haveinfiltrated the Iraqi police,” notes Mr Hili. He has obtained detailsof the kidnappings direct by phone and email from his undergroundIraqi LGBT activist colleagues in Baghdad.

“They are systematically targeting gays and lesbians forextra-judicial execution, as part of their so-called moralpurification campaign. The aim of the death squads is the creation ofa fundamentalist state, along the lines of the religious dictatorshipin Iran,” said Mr Hili.

Earlier, in June this year, extreme lslamist death squads burst intothe home of two lesbians in the city of Najaf. They shot them dead,slashed their throats, and also murdered a young child the lesbianshad rescued from the sex trade.

The two women, both in their mid-30s, were members of Iraqi LGBT. Theywere providing a safe house for gay men on the run from death squads.By sheer luck, none of the men being given shelter in the house wereat home when the assassins struck. They have now fled to Baghdad andare hiding in an Iraqi LGBT safe house in the suburbs.

“These homophobic kidnappings and murders are a snapshot of therapidly growing power and menace of fundamentalist death squads,”added Mr Hili.

“Gays are not their only targets. They enforce a harsh interpretationof Sharia law, summarily executing people for listening to western popmusic, wearing shorts or jeans, drinking alcohol, selling videos,working in a barber’s shop, homosexuality, dancing, having a Sunniname, adultery and, in the case of women, not being veiled or walkingin the street unaccompanied by a male relative.

“Two militias are doing most of the killing. They are the armed wingsof parties in the Bush and Blair-backed Iraqi government. Badr is themilitia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI),which is the leading political force in Baghdad’s governmentcoalition. Madhi is the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr.

“Both militias want to establish an Iranian-style clerical tyranny.They have a perverted, corrupt and violent misinterpretation ofIslam.

“The allied occupation of Iraq is bad enough. But victory for theMadhi or Badr militias would result in a reign of religious terrormany times worse.

“The execution of lesbian and gay Iraqis by extreme Islamist deathsquads and militias is symptomatic of the fate that will befall allIraqis if the fundamentalists continue to gain influence. The summaryexecution of queers is a warning of the barbarism to come.

“Saddam Hussein was a tyrant. It is good that he is no longer inpower. I don’t want him back. But under Saddam discrete homosexualitywas usually tolerated. There was no danger of gay people beingassassinated in the street by religious fanatics.

“Since Saddam’s overthrow, the violent persecution of lesbians andgays is commonplace. It is actively encouraged by Iraq’s leadingMuslim cleric, the British and US-backed Grand Ayatollah Alial-Sistani. In late 2005, he issued a fatwa ordering the execution ofgay Iraqis. His followers in the extreme Islamist militias are nowsystematically assassinating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgenderpeople,” said Mr Hili.

“Despite the great danger involved, Iraqi LGBT has established aclandestine network of gay activists inside Iraq’s major cities,including Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala, Hilla and Basra,” said PeterTatchell of the UK-based LGBT rights group OutRage!, which is workingwith Iraqi LGBT.
“These courageous activists are helping gay people on the run fromfundamentalist death squads; hiding them in safe houses in Baghdad,and helping them escape to Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

“The world ignores the fate of gay Iraqis at its peril. Their fatetoday is the fate of all Iraqis tomorrow,” said Mr Tatchell.

* Iraqi LGBT is appealing for funds to help the work of their membersin Iraq. They don’t yet have a bank account. The UK gay rights groupOutRage! is helping them. Cheques should be made payable to“OutRage!”, with a cover note marked “For Iraqi LGBT”, and sent toOutRage!, PO Box 17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK.
More information:
Ali Hili – 079819 594 53
Web:

http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com/

Iraqi LGBT needs funds to help its work in Iraq. It doesn’t yet have a bank account. Cheques should be made payable to Outrage, with a cover note marked “For Iraqi LGBT”, and sent to Outrage, PO Box 17816, London. SW14 8WT.

BAGHDAD GAYS FEAR FOR THEIR LIVES.

Homosexuals across the capital are being hunted down and murdered byIslamic militants and even the police.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006Basim al-Shara'a

Faris Thamir carefully watches the street in his Al-Batawinneighbourhood, afraid the police or militia men might try to kill him.

In Iraq, where religious radicals consider homosexuality a sinpunishable by death, gays have good reason to worry about being"outed".

Thamir, 35, is wary of the extremist Islamic groups that prowl thestreets of the capital - but neither does he trust the police who aresupposedly there to protect him.

Thamir and other gay men complain about frequent mistreatment bypolice, accusing them of blackmail, torture, sexual abuse and theft."Policemen raped me several times at gunpoint and threatened to handme over to extremist groups if I refuse," said Thamir.

Concern about the involvement of policemen in criminal acts have alsobeen raised by western officials and Sunni Arab leaders who say theShia-controlled interior ministry has been infiltrated by Shiamilitias, like the Badr Brigades, who allegedly use their uniforms ascover to kidnap, torture and murder.

Earlier this month, the head of 8th National Police Brigade, one ofBaghdad's frontline police units, was detained on suspicion ofinvolvement with sectarian death squads. Several thousand policemenhave been dismissed and face prosecution for criminal acts.

Thamir does not count on any official help anymore. After spending amonth in prison - during which he said he was tortured and beaten -police continued to pursue him. So he hid at a friend's house - andonly dares to go out twice a month, disguised as a woman.

For him, the Saddam era seems like a "golden" time becausehomosexuality was discreetly tolerated. "Now I am desperate because Iexpect either to be shot or beheaded at any moment," he said.

The legal situation for gays in Iraq today remains vague. According toresearch by Sِdertِrn University in Stockholm, it is unclear to datewhether a new law on the family, approved by the Interim GoverningCouncil in December 2003, prohibits homosexual activities.

Under Islamic law, homosexual practise is a crime that carries thedeath sentence. Article two of the Iraqi constitution approved byreferendum in December 2005 refers to Islam as being "the officialreligion of the state and a basic source of legislation" . But theextent to which state laws upholds Sharia is still under dispute.

Meanwhile, the witch-hunt against the country's gays has apparentlyreceived a blessing from one of the highest religious authorities inIraq, Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

According to the London-based gay human rights group OutRage!, awebsite linked to Sistani in the Iranian city of Qom posted a fatwaagainst gays in October 2005. "The people involved [in homosexuality]should be killed in the worst, most severe way," it said. Although thetext was removed from the website in May 2006, the fatwa has not beenofficially revoked.

Inhabitants of the Baghdadi neighbourhoods of Al-Amiriya andAl-Jamia'a speak of how extremist groups have killed gays in thestreet and also targeted their relatives.

Outrage! reports of cases where members of a family have been killedfor refusing to hand over a gay male relative to the militia.

From his house in the western neighbourhood of Al-Jamia'a, MukhtarSalah, 40, a former member of Saddam's security forces, said hewitnessed gunmen kill a young man, who he later heard is alleged tohave had an affair with an American soldier.

After killing him, the militants ordered people to go home andthreatened to behead anyone who tried to claim the body. "[It] wasleft in the street for two days," said Salah, until eventually it waspicked up by a National Guard patrol.

In Saddam's time, you risked being imprisoned for being gay - buthomosexual practices were nonetheless common in religiousneighbourhoods where young unmarried men would not dare to have anycontact with women.

Nail Mohammed, 25, considers his being gay just one risk among manyothers. In the Al-Fadhil neighbourhood where he lives, extremistIslamic groups kill gay men, but also people who wear jeans or drinkalcohol. In the past six months, he said three of his closest friendshave been killed for drinking.

Bilal Arif, 40, a Baghdad lawyer, feels Iraqi society is going frombad to worse: open and secular from the 1950s to the 1970s, it turnedinto a military dictatorship under Saddam and is now moving towardsreligious extremism, he says.

Arif doubts that homosexuals are being systematically targeted.Rather, he suspects they are the victims of "the mess all over Iraq"which allows people to take the law into their own hands. "They arekilled because there is no state to hold the murderers responsible orpursue them judicially," he said.

Paradoxically, those who kill gays believe they are acting within thelaw as the Sharia, which they adhere to, deems homosexuality a crimepunishable by death.
In so-called religious courts, supervised by clerics, with no officialauthority, gays are tried, sentenced to death and then executed bymilitiamen.

Such courts were first established by Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, fatherof Muqtada al-Sadr, in 1999 in secret to adjudicate on Islamic issues.Now they are present in many predominantly Shia towns like Ammara,Basra, Ramadi and in several Shia neighbourhoods in Baghdad such asShu´la, Hurria and Sadr City.

Due to the absence of the state in large areas of the country, theseillegitimate courts have gained more and more popular support.

The trials, presided over by young inexperienced clerics, are held inHusseiniyas (Shia mosques), offices of the Sadr movement or,particularly in Shu'la and Sadr City, in ordinary halls. Gays andrapists face anything from 40 lashes to the death penalty.

Mohammed al-Saidi, one of the self-appointed judges in Sadr City,believes that homosexuality is on the wane in Iraq. "Most [gays] havebeen killed and others have fled," he said. Indeed, the number who'vesought asylum in the UK has risen noticeably over the last few months.

Saidi insists the religious courts have a lot to be proud of, "We nowrepresent a society that asked us to protect it not only from thievesand terrorists but also from these [bad] deeds."
Basim al-Shara'a is an IWPR contributor in Baghdad.

(The names of people featured in this piece have been changed forsecurity reasons)
Copyright (c) 2006 Spero

Iraq torture 'worse after Saddam'

Torture may be worse now in Iraq than under former leader Saddam Hussein, the UN's chief anti-torture expert says.

Manfred Nowak said the situation in Iraq was "out of control", with abuses being committed by security forces, militia groups and anti-US insurgents.

Bodies found in the Baghdad morgue "often bear signs of severe torture", said the human rights office of the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq in a report.

The wounds confirmed reports given by refugees from Iraq, Mr Nowak said.

He told journalists at a briefing in Geneva that he had yet to visit Iraq, but he was able to base his information on autopsies and interviews with Iraqis in neighbouring Jordan.

"What most people tell you is that the situation as far as torture is concerned now in Iraq is totally out of hand," the Austrian law professor said.

"The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein," he added.

Brutal methods

The UN report says detainees' bodies often show signs of beating using electrical cables, wounds in heads and genitals, broken legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns.

Bodies found at the Baghdad mortuary "often bear signs of severe torture including acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances".

Many bodies have missing skin, broken bones, back, hands and legs, missing eyes, missing teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails, the UN report says.

Victims come from prisons run by US-led multinational forces as well as by the ministries of interior and defence and private militias, the report said.

The most brutal torture methods were employed by private militias, Mr Nowak told journalists.

The report also says the frequency of sectarian bloodletting means bodies are often found which "bear signs indicating that the victims have been brutally tortured before their extra-judicial execution".

It concludes that torture threatens "the very fabric of the country" as victims exact their own revenge and fuel further violence.

Mr Nowak said he would like to visit Iraq in person, but the current situation would not allow him to prepare an accurate report, because it would not be safe to leave Baghdad's heavily guarded Green Zone where the Iraqi government and US leadership are situated.

Gay Iraqi victims of the police and death squads

Gays flee Iraq as Shia death squads find a new target

Evidence shows increase in number of executions as homosexuals plead for asylum in Britain

Jennifer CopestakeSunday August 6, 2006The Observer


Hardline Islamic insurgent groups in Iraq are targeting a new type of victim with the full protection of Iraqi law, The Observer can reveal. The country is seeing a sudden escalation of brutal attacks on what are being called the 'immorals' - homosexual men and children as young as 11 who have been forced into same-sex prostitution.

There is growing evidence that Shia militias have been killing men suspected of being gay and children who have been sold to criminal gangs to be sexually abused. The threat has led to a rapid increase in the numbers of Iraqi homosexuals now seeking asylum in the UK because it has become impossible for them to live safely in their own country.

Ali Hili runs the Iraqi LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) group out of London. He used to have 40 volunteers in Iraq but says after recent raids by militia in Najaf, Karbala and Basra he has lost contact with half of them. They move to different safe houses to protect their identities, but their work is incredibly dangerous.

Eleven-year-old Ameer Hasoon al-Hasani was kidnapped by policemen from the front of his house last month. He was known in his district to have been forced into prostitution. His father Hassan told me he searched for his son for three days after his abduction, then found him, shot in the head. A copy of the death certificate confirms the cause of death.

Homosexuality is seen as so immoral that it qualifies as an 'honour killing' to murder someone who is gay - and the perpetrator can escape punishment. Section 111 of Iraq's penal code lays out protections for murder when people are acting against Islam.

'The government will do nothing to tackle this issue. It's really desperate when people get to the stage they're trading their children for money. They have no alternatives because there are no jobs,' Hili says.

Graphic photos obtained from Baghdad sources too frightened to identify themselves as having known a gay man, and seen by the Observer, show other gay Iraqis who have been executed. One shows two men, suspected of having a relationship, blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs - guns at the ready behind their heads - awaiting execution. Another picture captured on a mobile phone shows a gay man being beaten to death. Yet another shows a corpse being dragged through the streets after his execution.

One photograph is of the mutilated, burnt body of 38-year-old Karar Oda from Sadr City. He was kidnapped by the Badr Brigade in mid-June. They work with the Ministry of Interior and are the informal armed wing of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who make up the largest Shia bloc in the Iraq parliament. Oda's family were given an arrest warrant signed by the Ministry of Interior which said their son deserved to be arrested and killed for immorality as a homosexual. His body was found ten days later.

Dr Haider Jaber is currently seeking asylum in the UK after fleeing Iraq in 2004. He says the abuse started to escalate in his neighbourhood after the invasion. One night, walking home from work, he was surrounded by five men, who told him he had to become a heterosexual Muslim. He says they abused him for wearing jeans and a T-shirt with English writing, and told him he should adopt traditional robes. As a crowd gathered to watch, he was then beaten and kicked to the ground.

The threats continued. Armed militiamen broke into his family home and then his workplace looking for him. Jaber finally left the country in April. His partner, Ali. was not so lucky. Jaber learned of his Ali's murder a few days after leaving Iraq. 'They didn't send the body to the family to have a grave or a flower garden. They said he didn't deserve it because he was an animal,' he said.

Ibaa Alawi has also fled Iraq. A former employee at the British embassy in Baghdad, Alawi met Tony Blair on one of his surprise visits to Iraq. He said Blair was concerned about the safety of the Iraqis working there and praised their bravery. 'Tony Blair said the British government was thankful for our efforts and knew we were putting our lives at risk working for the British embassy in Baghdad.'

Alawi is upset the same government is not willing to help him out. He believes the Home Office will refuse him asylum because it would have to face up to the level of chaos in Iraq, and how much influence is being waged by radical Islamists - and face the fact that, for some, there is still no freedom in Iraq.

The immediate urgent priority is to Support and Donate Money to LGBT activists in Iraq in order to assist their efforts to communicate information about the wave of homophobic murders in Iraq to the outside world.

Funds raised will also help provide LGBTs under threat of honour killing with refuge in the safer parts of Iraq (including safe houses and food), and assist efforts help them seek asylum abroad.

Iraqi LGBT UK do not yet have bank account. We are working closely with the LGBT human rights group OutRage! in London.

Donations to help Iraqi LGBT in the UK and in Iraq should be made payable to "OutRage!",with a cover note marked "For Iraqi LGBT", and sent to :OutRage!, PO Box17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK

U.S. military acknowledges Iraq anti-gay killings

Exiled leader claims troops involved in Baghdad gay harassment

By LOU CHIBBARO JR. 7 Jun 2006

The U.S. military is aware of a rash of anti-gay killings in Iraq during the past eight months and is taking steps to curtail sectarian violence against all Iraqis, including gays, according to a spokesperson for the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq.

At least three men suspected of being gay were gunned down March 20 in the Iraqi city of Ramadi. U.S. forces say they are concerned about the rising number of anti-gay killings in Iraq. (Photo by Bilal Hussein/AP)
"If someone is in danger of being slaughtered or persecuted, we do all we can to stop it," said Army Maj. Joseph Todd Breasseale, chief of the Media Relations Division of the Multinational Corps in Iraq.


Breasseale spoke by telephone from his office at U.S. military headquarters in a section of Baghdad known as the Green Zone.


Faced with a highly volatile atmosphere brought about by warring Islamic factions, the U.S. and its coalition allies must use caution in addressing the issue of homosexuality, Breasseale said.


"It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, when we're in a fledgling time like this, to go in and say, 'Here's these issues that are going to repel 80 percent of the population and this is what we want to inflict on you,'" he said. "We're trying not to get into too many values judgment type issues and just do the right thing."


Breasseale's comments came in response to questions about how the U.S. was responding to a decision last October by a powerful Islamic leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to issue a fatwa calling for the killing of gays in Iraq. Bush administration officials have cited al-Sistani as a moderate voice among Iraqi Shiites.


Islam considers homosexuality sinful. A website published in the Iranian city of Qom in the name of Sistani, says: "Those who commit sodomy must be killed in the harshest way," according to BBC news reports. The statement appeared in an Arabic section of the website dealing with questions of morality, but not in the English-language equivalent.


A network of gay Iraqi exiles in Europe reported that the fatwa triggered a flurry of assassinations, kidnappings and death threats against Iraqi gays.

Ali Hili, founder and spokesperson for the exile group LGBT Iraqis U.K., said Islamic death squads came to life in response to Sistani's fatwa and brought about an atmosphere of terror among gays. He said some death squad members arranged meetings with gays through chat rooms by posing as gays themselves, then captured and sometimes assaulted or killed their targeted victims.


A call for action


International human rights groups, including the U.S.-based International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission, complained that the U.S. and its coalition partners in Iraq did not appear to be taking any action to stop the anti-gay killings.


In a May 11 letter to IGLHRC executive director Paula Ettelbrick, a State Department official said the American government was troubled over reports of violence against gays in Iraq and said the U.S. embassy in Baghdad would meet with gay rights groups to address the problem.


The letter came in response to a letter from IGLHRC calling on the State Department to speak out against the anti-gay killings in Iraq.


Breasseale's comments mark the first time a U.S. military spokesperson in Iraq has publicly discussed the anti-gay killings there.


"The problem is it's such a widespread [and] concerted effort of violence against so many disparate groups and organizations," Breasseale said. "It's essentially anyone who runs afoul of anyone who has a mind to do it winds up getting killed. So we're very much aware of it, and we take both the murders and the political assassinations very seriously.


"When it's possible, we work to investigate and try to track down who did it. But as you can imagine, it's a massive, massive concerted effort we're up against."


Claims of anti-gay abuse by U.S. military denied


Breasseale's telephone interview comes shortly after American military authorities disclosed they were investigating allegations that a Marine Corps unit intentionally shot and killed 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, a rural farming town in the Upper Euphrates Valley.


Hili, the head of the gay Iraqi exile group in London, alleged that in two cases, U.S. soldiers verbally abused and, in one case, assaulted gay Iraqis during routine searches of houses in Baghdad. In yet another incident, Hili said he learned through contacts in Iraq that a gay Iraqi was killed by one of the death squads after U.S. officials refused his request to gain access to the Green Zone for protection.


"We try to attack these issues as they come up, and all accusations of misbehavior that is attributed to bigotry are taken very seriously," Breasseale said in discussing Hili's reports of abuse against gay Iraqis by U.S. soldiers.

Breasseale called on Hili to provide more details about the incidents, such as dates, locations, and descriptions of the soldiers involved.


"All I can do at this point is reassure your readers that these allegations are taken very seriously, and that our soldiers — the vast 99.9 percent of them — do their jobs with honor and integrity day in and day out in what is easily one of the world's most grueling situations," Breasseale said. "And I can assure your readers that when allegations pan out, service members and their leadership are held accountable," he said.

http://www.washblade.com/thelatest/thelatest.cfm?blog_id=7336

The immediate urgent priority is to Support and Donate Money to LGBT activists in Iraq in order to assist their efforts to communicate information about the wave of homophobic murders in Iraq to the outside world.

Funds raised will also help provide LGBTs under threat of honour killing with refuge in the safer parts of Iraq (including safe houses and food), and assist efforts help them seek asylum abroad.

Iraqi LGBT UK do not yet have bank account. We are working closely with the LGBT human rights group OutRage! in London.

Donations to help Iraqi LGBT in the UK and in Iraq should be made payable to "OutRage!",with a cover note marked "For Iraqi LGBT", and sent to :OutRage!, PO Box17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK

Queer Iraqis are finding life is now worse than it was under Saddam

Ali Hili of Iraqi LGBT and OutRage! reveals the systematic murder of gay people by Shia fundamentalist death squads

Pink Paper – London 1 June 2006

Saddam Hussein was a tyrant. But discrete homosexuality was usually tolerated. Since Saddam’s overthrow, however, Islamist fundamentalists are growing in strength and influence. They want to establish an Iranian-style religious dictatorship. Three leading ayatollahs - Sistani, Baghdadi and Khoei – have recently issued fatwas ordering the execution of gay Iraqis. Their followers in the Badr Islamist militia are now targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people for execution.

The father of 23 year old Baghdad arts student, Karzan, has been told by militias that his son has been sentenced to death for being gay. If his father refuses to hand over Karzan for execution, the militia has threatened to kill the family one by one. This has already happened to Bashar, 34, an actor. Because his parents refuse to reveal his hiding place, the Badr fanatics have murdered of his two family members in retribution.

Nyaz is a 28-year old dentist who lives in Baghdad. She is terrified that her lesbian relationship will be discovered, and that both she and her partner will be killed. They have stopped seeing each other. It is too dangerous. To make matters worse, Nyaz is being forced by the fundamentalist al-Mahdi militia to marry an older, senior Mullah with close ties the militia leader, Muqtada al-Sadr. If she does not agree to the marriage, or tries to run away, Nyaz and her family will be targeted for ‘honour killing.’

Gay Iraqis cannot seek the protection of the police. The security forces have been infiltrated by fundamentalist militants. Fourteen year old Ahmed Khalil was accused of corrupting the community because he had sex with men. According to his Baghdad neighbour, in April four men in police uniforms arrived at Ahmed’s house in a four-wheel-drive police pick-up truck. They wore the distinctive face masks of the Badr militia. The neighbour saw the police drag Ahmed out of the house and shoot him at point-blank range, pumping two bullets into his head and several more bullets into the rest of his body.

In the chaos and lawlessness of post-war Iraq, hundreds of young boys are being blackmailed into the sex industry. The sex ring operators lure the boys into having gay sex, photograph them and then threaten to publish their photos unless they work as male prostitutes. If their gayness was publicly revealed, the boys would be executed by death squads. They are trapped.

Wathiq, aged 29, a gay architect, was kidnapped in Baghdad in March. Soon afterwards, the Badr militia sent his parents death threats, accusing them of allowing their son to lead a gay life and demanding a £11,000 ransom. The parents paid the money, thinking it would save Wathiq’s life. But he was found dead a few days later, with his body mutilated and his head cut off.

Despite the great danger involved, Iraqi LGBT has established a clandestine network of gay activists inside Iraq’s major cities, including Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala, Hilla and Basra. These activists are helping gay people on the run from fundamentalist death squads; hiding them in safe houses in Baghdad, and helping them escape to Syria and Lebanon. For gay Iraqis, gay rights is literally a life and death issue. We need your help.

* Iraqi LGBT is appealing for funds to help the work of our members in Iraq. We don’t yet have a bank account. OutRage! is helping us. Cheques should be made payable to “OutRage!”, with a cover note marked “For Iraqi LGBT”, and sent to OutRage!, PO Box 17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK.

More info on Iraqi LGBT: http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com/

Iran Exports Anti-Gay Pogrom to Iraq

By Doug Ireland

Shiite death squads in Iraq are carrying out a campaign that targets gay men for murder. This so-called “sexual cleansing” is happening under the nose of the U.S. military—but American authorities in the Green Zone have refused to do anything about it.

The highly organized campaign of beatings, kidnappings and murders of Iraqi gays follows a death-to-gays fatwa issued last October by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the 77-year-old Iranian who is supreme spiritual leader of all Shia Muslims in Iraq. The fatwa, available on Sistani’s official Web site, puts it this way, “The people involved [in homosexuality] should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.”

This reign of terror represents the importation into Iraq of the anti-gay killings being carried out in the Islamic Republic of Iran (see “Iran’s Anti-Gay Pogrom,” January). The Iraqi murders are the work of the Badr Corps, the military arm of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). The largest political formation in Iraq’s Shia community, SCIRI was headquartered in exile in Tehran until Saddam Hussein’s fall.

The SCIRI’s Badr Corps wear the uniforms of Iraqi police, which is under the nominal control of the Interior Ministry. But the Interior Ministry has been heavily infiltrated by Iran. Moreover, the Badr Corps’ salaries are paid by Iran—as a counselor of Sistani’s, Ali Debbagh, who is a member of the Iraqi parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, confirmed in a Feb. 17 interview with Le Monde.

“We are receiving regular reports from our extensive network of contacts with underground gay activists and gay people in Iraq—intimidation, beatings, kidnappings and murders of gays have become an almost daily occurrence,” says Ali Hili, a 33-year-old gay Iraqi exile in London. Five months ago, Hili, along with some 30 other gay Iraqis who have fled to the United Kingdom, founded the Iraqi LGBT U.K. group to document this persecution and support the victims. The group is accumulating evidence that Iranian agents are advising SCIRI. He says there are reports that Iranian agents have been involved in interrogations, questioning those arrested in Persian through translators.

Also, as in Iran, “Badr militants are entrapping gay men via Internet chat rooms,” Hili says. “They arrange a date, and then beat and kill the victim. Males who are unmarried by the age of 30 or 35 are placed under surveillance on suspicion of being gay, as are effeminate men. They will be investigated and warned to get married. Badr will typically give them a month to change their ways. If they don’t, or if they fail to show evidence that they plan to get married, they will be arrested, disappear and eventually be found dead. The bodies are usually discovered with their hands bound behind their back, blindfolds over their eyes and bullet wounds to the back of the head.”

Tahseen, a 31-year-old photography lab technician and underground gay activist, told me by telephone from Baghdad that, “Just last week, four gay people we know of were found dead. I am afraid to leave my room and go out in the street because I will be killed.” He said that men who seem obviously gay “cannot walk in the street. My best friend was recently killed for being gay.”

Tahseen also described the Badr Corps’ Internet entrapment program, noting that “since Sistani’s fatwa, the violence and killings have gotten much, much worse.” Tahseen lives in a Baghdad apartment with his two brothers. “Right now, I have five gay men hiding in my room in fear of their lives,” he said, the anguish audible in his voice. One man given refuge by Tahseen is Bashar, a 34-year-old stage actor, who was forced into hiding after he and his family received death threats. He said that before he went underground, his house was raided several times by the Badr Corps. Fortunately, he was not at home.

“We desperately need protection!” Tahseen pleaded. “But, when we go to the Americans, they laugh at us and don’t do anything.”

According to Hili, “These assaults and murders have been reported by underground gay activists in Baghdad to the Green Zone, but the Americans don’t want to upset the religious authorities, and so they do nothing and treat gay Iraqis with contempt or as an object of humor.”

An April 10 report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs confirmed that gay Iraqis have been targeted for kidnapping and murder because of their sexual orientation. A week later, the BBC also carried a report, interviewing several victims. But U.S. major media have so far turned a blind eye to this systematic murder of gays in Iraq—and to the refusal of the U.S. occupier to do anything to stop it.

The immediate urgent priority is to Support and Donate Money to LGBT activists in Iraq in order to assist their efforts to communicate information about the wave of homophobic murders in Iraq to the outside world.

Funds raised will also help provide LGBTs under threat of honour killing with refuge in the safer parts of Iraq (including safe houses and food), and assist efforts help them seek asylum abroad.

Iraqi LGBT UK do not yet have bank account. We are working closely with the LGBT human rights group OutRage! in London.

Donations to help Iraqi LGBT in the UK and in Iraq should be made payable to "OutRage!",with a cover note marked "For Iraqi LGBT", and sent to :

OutRage!, PO Box17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK

Solidarity!

U.S State Dept. ‘troubled’ over anti-gay violence in Iraq (Gay)

U.S. embassy in Baghdad willing to meet with gay groups

By LOU CHIBBARO JR
25 May 2006

The U.S. State Department said it is “troubled” by reports of increased violence against gays in Iraq and said the U.S. embassy in Baghdad is interested in meeting with gay rights groups to address the problem.

The Bush administration announcement came in response to a request by the U.S. based International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice condemn a rash of anti-gay killings in Iraq and to “ask that U.S. military and civilian personnel in Iraq call these abuses to the attention of Iraqi authorities.”
In an April 20 letter to Rice, Paula Ettelbrick, IGLHRC executive director, urged Rice to “demand a response” from the Iraqi authorities over the anti-gay killings.

In a May 11 reply to Ettelbrick’s letter, L. Victor Hurtado, acting director of the State Department’s Office of Iraq Affairs, said the U.S. is working with the Iraqi government to promote the protection of human rights.

“We are very troubled by these reported incidents of threats, violence, executions, and other violations of humanitarian law against members of the gay and lesbian community in Iraq,” Hurtado said in his letter.

Hurtado said the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad “is interested in further dialogue on this issue” with non-governmental groups, including the Iraq-based group Rainbow for Life, which monitors human rights abuses against gays.

Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Defense, told the Blade last week that reports of killings of Iraqi gays come at a time when other Iraqi groups are being targeted for assassinations and kidnappings. Among them, he said, are college professors, doctors and owners of liquor stores.

“We try to stop killings and assassinations regardless of the motive,” Venable said. “Violence is violence. We want to see it reduced and eliminated.”
A spokesperson for the Iraqi Embassy to the United States in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Violence linked to fatwa

A London-based group of exiled gay Iraqis took credit last week for pressuring a powerful Islamic leader into removing from his website a fatwa calling for the killing of gays in Iraq.

“They didn’t expect a gay rights group could challenge their religious authority, and we succeeded in doing that,” Ali Hili, founder and spokesperson for LGBT Iraqis U.K., said in a telephone interview from London.

But Hili’s group quickly discovered that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, while removing the announcement of the fatwa from his website, did not revoke the death order itself. Sistani also chose to leave on the site a clause in the fatwa that targets lesbians.

“Conditions are still very bad for gays and lesbians in my country,” Hili said.
Hili’s claims about the removal of the fatwa and his organization’s role in that decision could not be independently confirmed.

The fatwa — which Sistani issued last October — declared that all people “involved” in homosexuality “should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.”
Hili said it was too soon to determine whether Sistani’s decision to remove the fatwa announcement from Sistani’s widely read, Arabic language website would curtail a rash of death threats, kidnappings and assassinations of gay Iraqis. The killings increased sharply toward the end of last year, he claimed.

Death squads formed by Shiite Islamic militias have used Internet chat rooms established by gay Iraqis to arrange to meet gays in Baghdad and other cities, Hili said. In some cases the unsuspecting gays ensnared by this tactic have been abducted and shot to death, he said.
Gay Iraqis who have fled their country because of the threats have told gay rights groups in Europe that conditions had gotten so bad that entire categories of men — including unmarried men older than 30, anyone perceived as being effeminate or involved in the arts, and men with longer hair — have come under suspicion of being gay and are targets for death threats.
The Bush administration, while condemning Islamic clerics for threatening to execute a citizen of Afghanistan for converting to Christianity earlier this year, had remained silent over the anti-gay killings in Iraq.

However, during the past week, an official with the State Department and a spokesperson for the Pentagon said U.S. authorities in Iraq were troubled over a rash of assassinations and kidnappings waged by insurgents and Islamic militias against people in all segments of Iraqi society, including gays.

Hili said vague assurances by U.S. and British officials that they oppose violent acts against the Iraqi people have had little impact on the plight of Iraqi gays.
He said gay Iraqis have told his group through telephone and e-mail conversations that U.S. military officials repeatedly have turned down pleas for help by gays who show up at the U.S. military headquarters in the Green Zone in Baghdad.

“One guy went there and said, ‘I’m receiving death threats from the militias, please help me,’” Hili said. “They said we can’t help you, we can’t help all Iraqis. And the guy died. He’s been found shot — executed.”
Another call for help
The British gay rights group Outrage has expressed concern that Britain and the United States may be reluctant to condemn Sistani for his anti-gay fatwa because Sistani opposes the Iraqi insurgency and has backed the creation of an elected Iraqi government.
The 77-year-old Sistani has long called for Islamic law to supersede civil law in Iraq, in marked contrast to President Bush’s call for a constitutional form of government that includes the separation of church and state.
U.S. and other coalition nations haven’t challenge Sistani on human rights matters because he is viewed as the spiritual leader of the overwhelming majority of Iraqi Shiites.
Shiites make up the largest number of Iraqis and are expected to dominate the newly elected government.

According to reports by gay Iraqi exiles and others familiar with the turmoil in Iraq, a powerful militia supported by Iran and believed to be under the leadership of Sistani known as the Badr Corps has organized some of the death squads that target gays.

Hili, pointing to Sistani’s ties to Iran, calls him an Iranian “Trojan Horse” who wants to convert Iraq into the same type of “extremist” state that has taken hold in Iran.
He said he is convinced that the radical Islamic forces in Iran that are responsible for widespread executions of gays in that country prompted Sistani to issue his anti-gay fatwa in Iraq.

Hili said Sistani agreed to remove the fatwa from his website in response to pressure from international human rights groups. The pressure began after Hili’s group and others called attention to anti-gay persecution in Iraq.

He said Sistani’s organization opened negotiations with LGBT Iraqis U.K. through long-distance telephone conferences between London and Iraq and Iran, where the Iranian born Sistani has offices.

Hili said Sistani’s representatives expressed concern over allegations on LGBT Iraqis U.K.’s website that Sistani was misusing his religious authority in Iraqi affairs. Hili said his group used the influence his group’s website apparently was having on Sistani as a bargaining chip to seek removal of the fatwa from the Sistani website.

According to Hili, who said he is in contact with a clandestine network of gays in Iraq, at least two other ayatollahs have issued separate fatwas against Iraqi gays in the past several weeks.

A fatwa is a legal opinion or ruling issued by an Islamic scholar.

The immediate urgent priority is to Support and Donate Money to LGBT activists in Iraq in order to assist their efforts to communicate information about the wave of homophobic murders in Iraq to the outside world.

Funds raised will also help provide LGBTs under threat of honour killing with refuge in the safer parts of Iraq (including safe houses and food), and assist efforts help them seek asylum abroad.

Iraqi LGBT UK do not yet have bank account.

We are working closely with the LGBT human rights group OutRage! in London.

Donations to help Iraqi LGBT in the UK and in Iraq should be made payable to "OutRage!",with a cover note marked "For Iraqi LGBT", and sent to :

OutRage!, PO Box17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK

Solidarity!

Gays flee as religious militias sentence them all to death

From Daniel McGrory in Baghdad
The Times 17th May 2006

THE death threat was delivered to Karazan’s father early in the morning by a masked man wearing a police uniform.

The scribbled note was brief. Karazan had to die because he was gay. In the new Baghdad, his sexuality warranted execution by the religious militias.

The father was told that if he did not hand his son over, other family members would be killed.

What scares the city’s residents is how the fanatics’ list of enemies is growing.

It includes girls who refuse to cover their hair, boys who wear theirs too long, booksellers, liberal professors and prostitutes.

Three shops known to sell alcohol were bombed yesterday in the Karrada shopping district.

In this atmosphere of intolerance and intimidation, the militias have made no secret of their hatred of homosexuals.

The man who threatened Karazan said that he was a member of the Thaib (Wolf) Brigade, a commando group reportedly infiltrated by the armed wing of the hardliner Shia party the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Its orders come from fundamentalist clerics.

With his skin-tight clothes and long blonde hair, Karazan, a 23-year-old arts student, stood out in the Shia neighborhood of al-Dura.

He told The Times: “A number of my gay friends have been murdered, so I took this warning seriously.” The family fled this month to a suburb north of the city centre.

Karazan cut his hair short and dyed it black, but he is still too frightened to venture out.

His partner is in the Iraqi Army. With little money and no valid passport, he does not know how he can flee abroad.

Ali Hili, who ran a gay nightclub in Baghdad but fled to Britain this year after receiving death threats, says that he knows of more than 40 men murdered in recent months. “Badr militants used chartrooms to lure them to a rendezvous and then kill them,” he said.

He described a co-ordinate attack on one couple: 38-year-old Karim survived a hand- grenade attack on his home in al-Jameha, but his partner, Ali, was shot dead when he tried to flee his house near by.

Haydar Faiek, 40, a transsexual, was beaten and burnt to death last September in Karrada’s main street. Ammar, 27, was abducted and shot in the head in January.

Meanwhile, a 34-year-old theatre actor, who would only give his name as Bashar, has gone into hiding after a death threat. Two close members of his family have been murdered by militants, who say they will carry on killing his relatives until he turns himself in.

The Interior Ministry says that it is investigating a claim by gay activists that a 14-year-old male prostitute was killed in al-Dura last month by men in police uniforms. The gunmen told the boy’s father that he was executed for “corrupting the community”.

A ministry spokesman said that the Government did not condone vigilante groups. However, Nouri al-Malaki, the Prime Minister-designate, has conceded that the Iraqi security forces have been infiltrated by militia extremists.

Mr. Hili claims that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered spiritual figure in Iraq, provoked the murders by saying on his website in April last year that homosexuals should be killed in the “worst, most severe way”.

He said: “Al-Sistani gave the militias a theological sanction to murder gays.” He added that the ayatollah was forced to lift the fatwa against gays following protests, but refused to remove the reference to the punishment for lesbians.
“These people are taking Iraq back to the Dark Ages,” added Mr. Hili, 33.

His nightclub, in the basement of the Palestine Hotel, was one of the best-known in the city. Restaurants and cafés along Abu Nuwas Street were also popular haunts for gays.

His organization, Iraqi LGBT, runs safe houses in the capital and an underground network to help people to leave the country.

He said: “We could never envisage this happening when Saddam was overthrown. I had no love for the former President, but his regime never persecuted the gay community.”

Upsurge of violence in capital claims dozens

GUNMEN killed five guards then blew up an oil tanker parked near a market in northeastern Baghdad yesterday, killing 19 people and injuring at least 37 others, police said. The blast was an apparent sectarian attack against a Shia neighborhood.

A United Arab Emirates diplomat was seized as he walked home from his embassy in the Mansour district of Baghdad. His Sudanese guard was shot and wounded.

Four workers at a US base in Taji were killed by gunmen in northern Baghdad. Three US soldiers were killed by roadside bombs, and six civilians died in crossfire when police and suspected insurgents fought in Baghdad.

The US military said that it killed a militant planting a bomb southwest of Baghdad.

From: The Times

Sistani removes 'death to gays' fatwa

Iraqi gay protesters win success

Sistani urged to condemn homophobic murders and scrap anti-lesbian fatwa

Plea for fatwa against all vigilante murders

London – 12 May 2006

Iraqi gays and lesbians are claiming success following the decision of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to remove from his website a fatwa calling for the killing of homosexuals in the "worst, most severe way possible" (see the fatwa text below).

The removal on 10 May follows protests to Sistani by the London office of the Iraqi gay rights organisation, Iraqi LGBT, which represents a clandestine network of lesbian and gay activists inside Iraq’s major cities, including Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala, Hilla, Duhok and Basra.

Following two weeks of negotiations with Iraqi LGBT – UK, Sistani’s office agreed to remove the fatwa calling for the murder of gay men, but has curiously refused to remove the fatwa urging punishment for lesbianism.

Initially, Sistani’s office had demanded that Iraqi LGBT-UK delete their criticisms of Sistani from their website and apologise to the Grand Ayatollah for questioning his religious authority.

Iraqi LGBT-UK refused. It issued a counter-demand that Sistani remove his ‘death to gays’ fatwa from his website. After two weeks of sometimes tense negotiations, Sistani’s representatives in London and Najaf agreed to drop the homophobic fatwa from his website – except for the section calling for the punishment of lesbianism.

“We welcome the decision to remove the most murderously homophobic part of Sistanti’s fatwa from his website,” said gay Iraqi refugee, Ali Hili, who heads the organisation Iraqi LGBT – UK (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender). Mr Ali is also Middle East Affairs spokesperson for the British LGBT movement, OutRage!, which works closely with Iraqi LGBT – UK.

“This decision does not go far enough. The fatwa has been removed from Sistani’s website only. It has not been revoked. We want the entire fatwa withdrawn, including the hateful denunciation calling for the punishment of lesbians.

“Iraqi LGBT-UK urges Sistani to apologise and revoke his fatwa calling for the murder of homosexuals, and to issue a new fatwa condemning all vigilante violence, including vigilante attacks on gay and lesbian people.

“We believe that Sistani's fatwa has encouraged and sanctioned the current wave of execution-style assassinations of lesbians and gay men. He owes gay Iraqis an apology. He owes all Iraqis an apology for setting straight Iraqis against gay Iraqis.

“Endorsing the murder of other human beings is unIslamic. Our Muslim faith is one of love, compassion, tolerance and mercy. Hatred and prejudice have no legitimate place in our religion.

“Sistani’s encouragement of homophobic violence provokes negative views towards the Islamic faith and towards Muslim people.

“Iraqi LGBT-UK holds Sistani personally responsible for the murder of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Iraqis. He gives the killers theological sanction and encouragement.

“Evidence we have received from our underground gay contacts inside Iraq shows rising levels of homophobic threats, intimidation and violence by fundamentalist supporters of Sistani. These attacks have intensified since Sistani issued his anti-gay fatwa.

“Grand Ayatollah Sistani is the spiritual leader of all Shia Muslims in Iraq and around the world. He is also the spiritual leader of Iraq’s main Islamic fundamentalist movement, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which plays a leading role in the Iraqi government.

“SCIRI’s armed wing is the Badr corps, which is responsible for much of the sectarian and fundamentalist violence in Iraq today.

“The Badr Corps is a terrorist organisation and uses terrorist methods against political, religious, sexual and ethnic dissidents. It is behind much of the sectarian violence in Iraq today, including suicide bombings, kidnappings and the assassination of Sunnis, moderate Shia, trade unionists, women’s rights activists, gay people and secularists.

“The government in Iraq consults regularly with Sistani on political, social and moral issues. He wields huge influence over Iraqi government policy and the over Iraqi Shia public opinion.

“Sistani is not even Iraqi. He is an Iranian national who has set himself up as a religious leader in Iraq. He wants to impose an Iranian-style theocracy on the Iraqi people.

“The British government paid for Sistani to have medical treatment in the UK in 2004, and fetes him as a revered Muslim leader.

“Despite Badr’s murderous record, the UK allows its political arm, SCIRI, to have offices and fundraise in the UK.

“The Badr Corps has instituted a witch-hunt of lesbian and gay Iraqis – including violent beatings, kidnappings and assassinations.

“Badr agents have a network of informers who, among other things, target alleged 'immoral behaviour'. They kill gays, unveiled women, prostitutes, people who sell or drink alcohol, and those who listen to western music and wear western fashions.

“Badr militants are entrapping gay men via internet chat rooms. They arrange a date, and then beat and kill the victim.

“Males who are unmarried by the age of 30 or 35 are placed under surveillance on suspicion of being gay, as are effeminate men. They will be investigated and warned to get married. Badr will typically give them a month to change their ways. If they don't change their behaviour, or if they fail to show evidence that they plan to get married, they will be arrested, disappear and eventually be found dead. The bodies are usually discovered with their hands bound behind their back, blindfolds over their eyes, and a bullet wound in the back of the head.

“Our sources inside Iraq report the murders of the following gay and bisexual men. All the killings bear the hallmarks of the execution-style murders for which the Badr organisation is notorious.

“These killings are just a few of the many we have been able to get details about. They are the tip of an iceberg of religious-motivated summary executions. Gay Iraqis are living in fear of discovery and murder,” said Mr Hili.

Karim, aged 38, survived a hand grenade attack on his house in the Al-Jameha district of Baghdad in 2004. The attack by members of the Badr Corps, left him with severe facial disfigurement and shrapnel in his body. Simultaneously, the Badr Corps murdered his partner, Ali, at his house, also in the Al-Jameha district. They shot Ali as he tried to escape.

Haydar Faiek, aged 40, a transsexual Iraqi, was beaten and burned to death by Badr militias in the main street in the Al-Karada district of Baghdad in September 2005.

Sarmad and Khalid were partners who lived in the Al-Jameha area of Baghdad. Persons unknown revealed their same-sex relationship. They were abducted by the Badr organisation in April 2005. Their bodies were found two months later, in June, bound, blindfolded and shot in the back of the head.

Naffeh, aged 45, disappeared in August 2005. His family were informed that he was kidnapped by the Badr organisation. His body was found in January 2006. He, too, had been subjected to an execution-style killing.

Ammar, aged 27, was abducted and shot in back of the head in Baghdad by suspected Badr militias in January 2006.

Bashar, an actor aged 34, who resides in Baghdad, has been forced to go into hiding, after receiving death threats against him and his family. Before he went underground, his house was raided several times by the Badr Corps. Fortunately, he was not at home, otherwise he fears he would have been kidnapped and killed.

A copy of Sistani's fatwa, with translation, follows below.

Further information:

Ali Hili in London

Mobile phone: + 44 (0) 79 819 594 53

Email: iraqilgbt@yahoo.co.uk

Weblog: http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com/

The text of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s fatwa, calling for the killing of sodomites, as it was shown on his website prior to its removal on 10 May 2006.

It was on the Sistani website

www.sistani.org

It was under the section Istiftaaat. You went to letter L in Arabic, and looked up the word Lewat which means (sodomy). See question 5.


5

§ السؤال : ما هو حكم اللواط والسحاق؟§ الجواب : حرام. ويعاقب فاعلهما بل يقتل فاعل اللواط اشد قتلة.


Direct link:
http://www.sistani.org/html/ara/main/index-istifta.php?page=4&lang=ara&part=4

Q5: What is the judgment for sodomy and lesbianism?
A5: Forbidden. Punished, in fact, killed. The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way possible.

ENDS

Iraqi police 'killed 14-year-old boy for being homosexual'

Iraqi Police execute 'gay' child

Ahmed, aged 14, shot dead on doorstep

Murdered to cleanse the community

Fundamentalist police blamed – Ahmed, gone but not forgotten

London – 4 May 2006

Iraqi police are accused of executing a 14 year old boy in the al-Dura
district of Baghdad in early April.

Ahmed Khalil was accused of corrupting the community and creating a
scandal because he had sex with men.

Ahmed was, in fact, a victim of poverty. He sold his body to get money
and food to help his impoverished family survive.

"According to a neighbour, who witnessed Ahmed's execution from his
bedroom window, four police officers arrived at Ahmed's
house in a four-wheel-drive police pick-up truck. The neighbour saw
the police drag Ahmed out of the house and shoot him at point-blank
range, pumping two bullets into his head and several more bullets into
the rest of his body," said Ali Hili, an exiled gay Iraqi who is
Middle East Affairs spokesperson for the London-based gay human rights
group OutRage!.

Mr Hili is also coordinator of the Iraqi LGBT – UK group, consisting
of more than 30 Iraqi gay exiles in the UK. They are in contact with
an underground network of gay people in Baghdad and other cities.

Mr Hili was given details of Ahmed's execution by his friends in
Baghdad, including J, a university graduate and professional, who
lives in the al-Dura area and who has spoken to eye-witnesses and
Ahmed's neighbours.

More details about Ahmed's life and death follow below.

Mr Hili said:

"Young Ahmed was a victim of poverty. He was summarily executed,
apparently by fundamentalist elements in the Iraqi police.

"According to our contacts in Baghdad, the Iraqi police have been
heavily infiltrated by the Shia paramilitary Badr Corps. They are
seeking to impose a fundamentalist morality on the people of Iraq.

"The murder of Ahmed follows a pattern of Badr executions of suspected
gays and lesbians in Iraq. Badr are using their members in the police
to enforce the violent homophobia of Sharia law.

"Badr's policy is to murder gay people, prostitutes, unveiled women,
sellers and consumers of alcohol and people with Sunni-sounding names.

"Inspired by the Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani, who has issued a death fatwa against lesbians and gays,
Badr is kidnapping and executing people suspected of homosexuality,
even young kids.

"Our gay contacts in Baghdad condemn the sexual exploitation of young
people. They are working to help rescue teenagers pressured into
prostitution by their impoverished circumstances," said Mr Hili.

"We are greatly indebted to Ali Hili and his gay friends in Baghdad
for investigating the tragic murder of Ahmed and other gays and
lesbians," added Peter Tatchell, campaign coordinator of OutRage!.

"They are taking great personal risks to expose the wave of
fundamentalist-inspired homophobic killings. Documenting these brutal,
barbaric murders takes time and money. Our gay friends in Baghdad are
surviving on tiny incomes. We are trying to get them funding to cover
transport, phone bills, internet and email access, and the purchase of
a computer," said Mr Tatchell.

* Ali Hili and the Iraqi feminist activist, Houzan Mahmoud, will
address a public meeting, Women, Gays & Secularism in Post-War Iraq,
co-sponsored by OutRage! and the Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association,
on Friday 19 May, 7pm, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1.
Further info: Brett Lock 0770 843 5917.

Donations to help Iraqi LGBT in the UK and in Iraq should be made
payable to "OutRage!", with a cover note marked "For Iraqi LGBT", and
sent to OutRage!, PO Box 17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK.

Further information:

Ali Hili, Iraqi LGBT UK and OutRage! – 077 - 5755 6946

--------------------

Ahmed's story – A cruel, barbaric death. Gone but not forgotten

Ali Hili, of OutRage! and Iraqi LGBT UK, was told about the execution
of Ahmed Khalil by gay friends in Baghdad. They knew Ahmed and his
family, and have collected eye-witness accounts from Ahmed's
neighbours, which they have relayed to Mr Hili in London.

This is Mr Hili's story about the execution of Ahmed, based on
firsthand accounts given by eye-witnesses and neighbours:

"Ahmed Khalil was a likeable, playful 14 year old boy, born in the
southern Iraqi town of al-Ammara," said Mr Hili.

"The eldest child, he came from an uneducated family who lived in great
poverty.

"After the 2003 US-led invasion, the Iraqi economy collapsed, causing
widespread unemployment and the disintegration of social services.

"With no income or welfare support in al-Ammara, Ahmed's family moved
to Baghdad a couple of years ago, after the fall of Sadaam Hussein.

"His father wanted to find a job to support his wife, two sons and
daughter. The family settled in al-Dura, a very poor southern district
of Baghdad.

"Ahmed's father worked as a night watchman on a building site for the
pitiful wage of 10 dollars a month, plus permission for him and his
family to live on the site until the construction of the new houses
was completed. They lived in the shell of the unfinished buildings. It
was a life of desolation and destitution.

"Ahmed was often bullied by the neighbourhood boys for being poor. He
had no one to protect him.

"It is unclear whether Ahmed was gay or not. He had sex with men,
often in exchange for small amounts of money and food. He did this in
order to help his family financially. Sometimes they were so
desperate, he had sex for a few potatoes or some bread.

"Ahmed's 'gay' reputation spread all over his neighbourhood, causing
great scandal. His behaviour was reported to the police by informants
in the community.

"In early April 2006, Ahmed was found dead on the doorstep of his
house. He had been shot, with two bullets in the head and several
bullets in the rest of his body.

"According to a neighbour, who saw Ahmed's execution from his bedroom
window, four uniformed police officers arrived at Ahmed's house in a
four-wheel-drive police pick-up truck. The neighbour saw the police
drag Ahmed out of the house and shoot him at point-blank range.

"Several other neighbours confirm this account, although they did not
see the actual shooting. They say they heard gunshots and saw the
police leaving the scene. They then found Ahmed's body lying on the
ground outside his house. It is believed by these neighbours that
Ahmed was executed by the police.

"Two days before Ahmed's execution, his father was arrested and
interrogated by the police. They demanded to know what he knew about
Ahmed's sexual activities and blamed Ahmed for corrupting the
community. Officers eventually released Ahmed's father. His son was
killed soon afterwards.

"Both Ahmed's mother and father wept over their sons' brutal killing.
Even though homosexuality is taboo, they did not agree he deserved to
die. The family see him as a victim of poverty and police murder.

"Because they are so poor, the family could not afford a funeral for
their son.

"The day after Ahmed was murdered, his family moved out of the area,
fearing police retribution and denunciation within the local
community. The family's whereabouts and fate is unknown.

"Ahmed is one of many hundreds of teenage boys and girls in Iraq who
sell their bodies to survive and support their impoverished families.

"Our gay contacts in Baghdad condemn the sexual exploitation of young
people. They are endeavouring to help rescue teenagers pressured into
prostitution.

"Iraqi LGBT in London and Baghdad call on the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees, the Red Cross and Red Cresent and
international aid agencies to take action to aid poor Iraqi families,
so that children no longer feel obliged to resort to sex-for-money in
order to survive," said Mr Hili.

ENDS

Stop the antigay Iraqi killings now!

LGBT Iraqis are being slaughtered with the blessing of Islamic religious leaders. How can you help? Start by speaking up—in particular, by demanding that U.S. politicians do their duty to protect the people of Iraq

By Scott Rose27 April 2006

An anti gay pogrom is taking place in Iraq. Gratuitous killings of gays are permitted under Iraqi law, and it is a fact that George W. Bush approved the wording of the Iraqi constitution that makes it so.

Mainstream U.S. media are not reporting on the plight of Iraqi gays, nor are they discussing how to rescue them. This point out the urgent need for LGBT Americans to participate more in our democracy.

For those who have not yet learned of these circumstances, here is some background.
In August 2005, the United States was party to negotiations regarding the wording of the Iraqi constitution. The United States sanctioned the results, which included a change making Islam “the” rather than “a” main source of Iraqi law. Sharia Islamic law calls for homosexual people to be killed.

Some time around October 2005, the Ayatollah Sistani, writing in a question-and-answer section of the Arab-language version of his official Web site, issued an antigay fatwa. He was asked, “What is the judgment for sodomy and lesbianism?” He replied, “Forbidden. Punished, in fact, killed. The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.”

Reports from gay Iraqi refugees in London who maintain contact with people in their homeland say that Sistani’s fatwa is being carried out. The Badr Brigade is said to be particularly active in anti gay persecution. According to the refugees and the Iraqis with whom they are in communication, identifiably gay people are attacked in the streets and beaten to death as surrounding crowds cheer on the killers. The same sources report that unmarried men approaching the age of 30 are given one month to marry a woman and then, if they fail to do so, they are murdered.

It is also reported that identifiably gay people, afraid for their lives, are hiding in the homes of sympathetic friends and relatives, much as Ann Frank sought refuge from the Nazis. They claim that even when Iraqi gays seek safe haven in the Green Zone in Baghdad, they are mocked and turned away by American soldiers. While tangential to the anti gay pogrom, further reports say that Badr Brigade members also are killing people perceived to have violated Islamic law—for example, unveiled women and people who don Western dress or listen to Western music.

Why is the Bush administration, which rushed to the defense of a single Christian convert threatened with death in Afghanistan, not saying anything about the anti gay pogrom in Iraq? We know that Bush himself is hostile to LGBT equality. We can also presume, with reasonable assurance of accuracy, that Bush’s true salient preoccupation is protecting the production-sharing agreements he procured for U.S. oil companies operating in Iraq, despite all his fine talk about democracy and freedom.

Yet one very major reason the U.S. media and the Bush administration are silent on the subject of the anti gay pogrom in Iraq is that LGBT Americans are not bothering to speak out on this issue. I know it can be hard to believe, given the realities of the Bush administration, that the United States is a democracy. But it is. And one of the curious aspects of any democracy is that the most important people in it, the people, have a responsibility but not an obligation to influence the course of their nation.

Presidents, cabinet members, and members of Congress have no choice; they are elected to do a job, and they must fulfill the responsibilities of their posts or suffer the consequences. The people, by contrast, are at liberty not to put one iota of their energy into giving direction to the government. There is no penalty of any sort for not writing to one’s elected representatives, apart from that of waking up one day to find that one’s country has been transformed into a hellish monster.

In the past six years, evangelical Christians have influenced the United States out of all proportion to their numbers, in ways that are even in conflict with our country’s constitution. That has not happened merely because the Republican Party meticulously cultivated evangelical leaders; it has happened because grassroots evangelicals do not hesitate to communicate their views to their elected officials.

More people than I care to think about justify their criminal laziness when it comes to communicating their views to elected officials with preposterous defeatism. The recurring theme of that preposterous defeatism is, “They aren’t going to listen to me.”
Well, guess what? A single message from one constituent will not likely produce results, but the same message received from 500,000 constituents certainly will. Every senator and member of the House has an office e-mail address. The messages sent to it are reviewed by office staff, and what they learn from the messages is regularly discussed in strategy meetings. If Senator Clinton’s office receives 30 messages about the antigay pogrom in Iraq, the matter will be considered too unimportant among the people to count for anything.

Like many career politicians, Senator Clinton stands for nothing except her own drive to remain in power. If 500,000 constituents sent to her office an e-mail saying that the pogo stick had to be declared the official means of transportation in New York State, we would be that much closer to such a ridiculous declaration. If 500,000 constituents sent her a message saying that the antigay pogrom in Iraq must be addressed with red hot urgency, it would be.

Traditional paper mail is a distinct tool for communication with elected officials. Unlike e-mail, a letter generally receives an acknowledgement, often a form letter but sometimes an explanation of the official’s position and record on the relevant matter of concern. Like e-mail traffic, paper mail registers on the recipient’s agenda. Can you imagine if, on top of 500,000 e-mails protesting the anti-gay pogrom in Iraq, Senator Clinton received 500,000 paper letters on the subject?

The antigay pogrom in Iraq is profoundly disturbing. That Bush-approved language for the Iraqi constitution making the indiscriminate killing of gays a legal activity is galling beyond all measure and beneath contempt. But it also is a call to Americans to fulfill their duties within our democracy. Beyond the tragedy befalling Iraqi gays lies the one befalling American LGBT people. If you don’t speak up to let them know you are there, they will act as though you are not.

The immediate urgent priority is to Support and Donate Money to LGBT activists in Iraq in order to assist their efforts to communicate information about the wave of homophobic murders in Iraq to the outside world.

Funds raised will also help provide LGBTs under threat of honour killing with refuge in the safer parts of Iraq (including safe houses and food), and assist efforts help them seek asylum abroad.

Iraqi LGBT UK do not yet have bank account.
We are working closely with the LGBT human rights group OutRage! in London.

Donations to help Iraqi LGBT in the UK and in Iraq should be made payable to

"OutRage!",with a cover note marked "For Iraqi LGBT", and sent to OutRage!, PO Box17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK

Solidarity!

BBC : Gay Iraqis fear for their lives

By Michael McDonough BBC News website


"I don't want to be gay anymore. When I go out to buy bread, I'm afraid. When the doorbell rings, I think that they have come for me."

That is the fear that haunts Hussein, and other gay men in Iraq.

They say that since the US-led invasion, gay people are being killed because of their sexual orientation.

They blame the increase in violence on the growing influence of religious figures and militia groups in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was ousted.

Islam considers homosexuality sinful. A website published in the Iranian city of Qom in the name of Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shia cleric, says: "Those who commit sodomy must be killed in the harshest way".

Sistani's official website calls for gay men to be executed:

http://www.sistani.org/html/ara/main/index-istifta.php?page=4&lang=ara&part=4


"The statement appears in Arabic section of the website, in a section dealing with questions of morality, but not in the English-language equivalent.



The BBC asked Mr Sistani's representative, Seyed Kashmiri, to explain the ruling.
"Homosexuals and lesbians are not killed for practising their inclinations for the first time," Mr Kashmiri said in a response sent via email.

"There are certain conditions drawn out by jurists before this punishment can be implemented, which is perhaps similar to the punishment meted out by other heavenly religions."

Mr Kashmiri added: "Some rulings that are drawn out by jurists are done so on a theoretical basis. Not everything that is said is implemented."

Violent attacks

Killings and kidnappings are widespread in Iraq, with much of the bloodshed being linked to sectarian tensions and the anti-US insurgency.

But homosexual Iraqis who have spoken to the BBC say they are also being targeted because of their sexual orientation.

Hussein is 32 and lives in Baghdad with his brother, sister-in-law and nieces.
He says his effeminate appearance and demeanour make him stand out and attract hostility.

"My brother's friends told him: 'In the current chaos you could get away with killing your brother without retribution and get rid of this shame,'" Hussein said, after agreeing to speak to the BBC only if his real name was not used.

A transsexual friend of his, who had changed names from Haydar to Dina, was killed on her way to a party in Baghdad about six months ago, Hussein said.

Gym terror:

Ahmed is a 31-year-old interior decorator who used to live in Baghdad with his boyfriend, Mazin.

Ahmed fled to Jordan nine months ago after Mazin was murdered outside a gym.


After his partner was shot dead, Ahmed hid in the gym toilets then slipped away and later flew to Amman, the Jordanian capital.

He says it was well known that they were a couple and Mazin was targeted because of his sexuality.

"I fled from Iraq because of the threat to my life, because I was a gay man," he told the BBC.

Ahmed also said that, before the gym shooting, he and a gay friend had survived a grenade attack and he still had fragments of shrapnel in his face.

The friend was killed a week later by gunmen who raided his house, he added.
Powerful militia Iraq's deputy interior minister Maj Gen Hussein Kamal told the BBC that he was unaware of any minority groups being specifically targeted for kidnappings and killings.

He also said he was unaware of the statement on Ayatollah Sistani's website calling for gay people to be killed.

But he added: "We do not condone vigilante action. We encourage the victims to inform the authorities if they are subjected to any attacks."

However, Hussein says gay people are afraid of the police.

The Interior Ministry is run by members of Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), which is one of Iraq's country's leading Shia parties.

Sciri has its own militia, the Badr Brigades, and there are widespread concerns that large parts of Iraq's police force are under the control of such groups.

Hussein blames the Badr Brigades and other Shia militia for many of the attacks on gay Iraqis.

Saddam was a tyrant, but at least we had more freedom then " Hussein add"

Human rights group Amnesty International has focused most of its work in Iraq on the high levels of violence linked to the insurgency.

The organisation said it had no information on reports of anti-gay activities in the country.

"It is not an area that we have been actively looking at, but that is not to say that we will not look into the issue at some point," said a spokesman at the group's London headquarters.

But Hussein, Ahmed and gay activists outside Iraq say there is clear evidence that the situation has deteriorated dramatically for Iraqi homosexuals.

"Saddam was a tyrant, but at least we had more freedom then," said Hussein. "Nowadays, gay men are just killed for no reason."
Arabic interviews by Muhayman Jamil

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4915172.stm

U.N. agency confirms gay Iraqi's targeted for kidnapping and murder

U.N. AGENCY CONFIRMS GAY IRAQIS TARGETED FOR KIDNAPPING AND MURDER

13 April 2006 - Gay City News, New York

By Doug Ireland

A report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) has confirmed that gay Iraqis have been targeted for kidnapping and murder because of their sexual orientation.

This U.N. report, released April 10 by the UNOCHA‘s IRIN news and information service, described the widespread increase in kidnappings for ransom and the subsequent killings of university professors and teachers—350 in the past five months alone—and quoted Iraqi Interior Ministry official Ra’ad Hassan as saying that “roughly 50 kidnappings take place countrywide every day.”

Hassan also told the U.N. office, “Since January, the number of kidnappings has increased unabated, along with attacks and threats against certain communities.”

The U.N. report said that Iraq’s gay community is one of those targeted “for reasons other than ransom money,” and said that one local non-governmental organization reported that “members of Iraq’s small gay community had received more than 70 threats from kidnappers in the past two months, while 12 have been killed.”

The U.N. report quoted Mustafa Salim, spokesman for a local Iraqi gay organization called Rainbow for Life, as saying, “We’re trying to help these people, but it’s getting very difficult, and our organisation has been targeted twice since last month. We know for certain that those killed were targeted because of their sexual preferences.”

This U.N. report reinforces this reporter’s earlier exposé of the systematic campaign of kidnapping and murder targeting Iraqi gays following the death-to-gays fatwa issued last October by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani , spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shi’ite Muslims (“Shia Death Squads Target Iraqi Gays,” GCN, March 23-29).

That attributed the sequestrations and killings of Iraqi gays to death squads of the Badr Corps, the Iranian-financed military arm of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country’s most powerful Shi’ite political group.

While the U.N. report does not mention the Badr Corps—no doubt for political reasons having to do with a desire not to offend Shi’a religious and political authorities—it does confirm that Iraqi gays are under serious and organized attack,

In this week's issue of the famous French investigative-satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé, an article by David Fontaine reprises and credits GCN report on the anti-gay Iraqi death squads

http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2006/04/un_agency_confi.html

Shia death squads target Iraqi gays -- U.S. indifferent

SHIA DEATH SQUADS TARGET IRAQI GAYS -- U.S. Indifferent

23 March 2006 - Gay City News -- New York's largest gay weekly newspaper

By Doug Ireland

Following a death-to-gays fatwa issued last October by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, death squads of the Badr Corps have been systematically targeting gay Iraqis for persecution and execution, gay Iraqis say. But when they ask for help and protection from U.S. occupying authorities in the “Green Zone,” gay Iraqis are met with indifference and derision.

“The Badr Corps is committed to the ‘sexual cleansing’ of Iraq,“ says Ali Hili, a 33-year-old gay Iraqi exile in London who, with some 30 other gay Iraqis who have fled to the United Kingdom, five Years ago founded the Abu Nawas Group there to support persecuted gay Iraqis (Abu Nawas was a great 8th century classical poet of Arab and Persian descent who is known throughout Middle East cultures, and is famous for his poems in praise of same-sex love.)

Said Hili, “We believe that the Badr Corps is receiving advice from Iran on how to target gay people.” In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been carrying out a lethal anti-gay pogrom against Iranian gays, notably through entrapment by Internet -- and this tactic has recently begun to be used by the Badr Corps in Iraq to identify and hunt down Iraqi gays.

The well-armed Badr Corps is the military arm of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the powerful Shia group that is the largest political formation in Iraq’s Shia community, which was head quartered in Tehran until Saddam Hussein‘s fall. The SCIRI’s Badr Corps is trained and commanded by former Iraqi army officers.

The Ayatollah Sistani, the 77-year-old Iranian-born cleric who is the supreme Shia authority in Iraq, is revered by SCIRI as its spiritual leader. His anti-gay fatwa (available on Sistani’s official website) says that “people involved” in homosexuality “should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.”

Speaking by telephone from London, the Abu Nawas Group's Hili said that “there is a very, very serious threat to life for gay people in Iraq today. We are receiving regular reports from our extensive network of contacts with underground gay activists and gay people in Iraq -- intimidation, beatings, kidnappings and murders of gays have become an almost daily occurrence. The Badr Corps was killing gay people even before the Ayatollah’s fatwah, but Sistani’s murderous homophobic incitement has given a green light to all Shia Muslims to hunt and kill lesbians and gay men.”

Hili says,”Badr Corps agents have a network of informers who, among other things, target alleged 'immoral behavior'. They kill gays, unveiled women, prostitutes, people who sell or drink alcohol, and those who listen to western music and wear western fashions.

"Badr militants are entrapping gay men via internet chat rooms. They arrange a date, and then beat and kill the victim. Males who are unmarried by the age of 30 or 35 are placed under surveillance on suspicion of being gay, as are effeminate men. They will be investigated and warned to get married. Badr will typically give them a month to change their ways. If they don't change their behavior, or if they fail to show evidence that they plan to get married, they will be arrested, disappear and eventually be found dead. The bodies are usually discovered with their hands bound behind their back, blindfolds over their eyes, and bullet wounds to the back of the head.”

Tahseen is an underground gay activist in Iraq, and a correspondent there for the British Abu Nawas Group. A 31-year-old photography lab technician, Tahseen told me by telephone from Baghdad this weekend that, “Just last week, four gay people we know of were found dead. I am afraid to leave my room and go out in the street because I will be killed. We all live in fear.“ Tahseen said that men who seem obviously gay “cannot walk in the street. My best friend was recently killed for being gay.”

Tahseen confirmed the murderous efficiency of the Badr Corps’ Internet entrapment program. “Within one hour after they meet a gay person in an Internet chat room, that person will disappear and be found dead,” he said, adding that “since Sistani’s fatwa, the life of a gay person is worth nothing here, and the violence and killings have gotten much, much worse.”

Tahseen lives in a Baghdad apartment with his two brothers. “Right now, I have five gay men hiding in my room in fear of their lives, because they cannot go outside without risking being killed,” he said, with anguish audible in his voice. “They are all listening to me as I speak with you.” All those hiding with Tahseen are in their late twenties or early thirties, and by their mannerisms would be easily identified as gay by most Iraqis. I spoke briefly with one of them, who expressed his fear in a soft, shy voice.

One of those being given refuge by Tahseen is Bashar, a 34-year-old stage actor, who was forced to go into hiding after receiving death threats against him and his family. Before he went underground, his house was raided several times by the Badr Corps. Fortunately, he was not at home, otherwise he fears he would have been kidnapped and killed.

“We desperately need protection!” pleaded Tahseen. “But, when we go to the Americans, they laugh at us and don’t do anything. The Americans are the problem!” The Abu Nawas Group’s Hili confirmed from London that representations to officials of the U.S. occupation in Baghdad’s famous “Green Zone” had been made by underground gay activists, only to be met with disdain and indifference.

Hili, who has a bachelor’s degree in English literature, and who used to work for Iraqi radio and television, fled to the U.K. in 2002 after having been persecuted for being gay under Saddam Hussein. “In the late ‘80s and early 90s there were a couple of gay clubs in Baghdad, but they were all shut down in 1993 after sanctions were imposed against Saddam’s regime and Iraq.

"We had a weekly gay nightclub in the Palestine Hotel that became the gathering place for gay people, especially for actors and others in the entertainment world, but it, too, was shut down.

"I was arrested three times for being gay, and tortured. After several attempts, I finally was able to escape the country, going first to Dubai, then Jordan, then Syria, and finally reaching England.” Now, Hili says, he is heartbroken to see that, three years after Saddam’s fall, life for gay people in Iraq is even more unbearable than before.

“Just last night I spoke via Internet with a young gay man in his mid-20s who was caught by SCIRI agents. He had no identification with him -- gay people are afraid to carry their I.D.s when they go in the street in case they are caught,” because both the police and the Badr Corps agents would inform their families and add them to a list of known homosexuals, which would be used later to target them for killing.. “This young man had his left arm broken by the SCIRI thugs -- I saw this with my own eyes via Internet camera,” Hili said.

Hili said the Abu Nawas Group is accumulating evidence that Iranian agents are advising SCIRI and the Iraqi police on how to implement anti-gay persecution. Not only has Iran’s Internet entrapment campaign targeting gays been adopted in Iraq, he says, but there are reports that Iranian agents have been involved in interrogations, questioning those arrested in Persian through translators. “This is particularly true in Basra in the south,” Hili says.

Hili provided information on the cases of several gay victims of the Badr Corps, but said, “"These killings are just the ones we have been able to get details about. They are the tip of an iceberg of religious-motivated executions. Gay Iraqis are living in fear of discovery and murder." The victims include:

Haydar Faiek , aged 40, a transsexual Iraqi, was beaten and burned to death by Badr militias in the main street in the Al-Karada district of Baghdad in September 2005.

Ammar , aged 27, was abducted and shot in back of the head in Baghdad by suspected Badr militias in January 2006.

Naffeh, aged 45, disappeared in August 2005. His family was informed that he was kidnapped by the Badr organization. His body was found in January 2006. He, too, had been subjected to an execution-style killing.

Sarmad and Khalid were partners who lived in the Al-Jameha area of Baghdad. Persons unknown revealed their same-sex relationship. They were abducted by the Badr organization in April 2005. Their bodies were found two months later, in June, bound, blindfolded and shot in the back of the head.

The al-Arabiya TV network reported this weekend that a backroom deal had been reached to nominate Abdel Mahdi , a leading SCIRI figure and currently Iraq’s vice president, to be the new Iraqi prime minister (the accord is said to have been reached by representatives of SCIRI, the Kurdish list, and the Sunni Iraqi Concord Front.)

There is great fear that the Badr Corps-SCIRI campaign against gay people will become official Iraqi policy, especially if the report that a top SCIRI politican may become the new prime minister turns out to be true. Under the Iraqi Constitution -- virtually written by U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad and his associates -- Sharia law, which mandates death for homosexuals, is the foundation of all Iraqi law.

Reuters reported last August 20th, under the headline, “U.S. Concedes Ground to Islamists on Iraqi Law,” that the U.S. brokered a deal “making Islam 'the,' not 'a,' main source of law -- changing current wording -- and subjecting all legislation to a religious test.”

Reuters quoted a leading Kurdish politician as saying at that time, “'We [are given to] understand the Americans have sided with the Shi'ites," he said. "It's shocking. It doesn't fit American values. They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state ... I can't believe that's what the Americans really want or what the American people want.'"

If you would like to help support gay Iraqis, the Abu Nawas Group desperately needs money to expand its work on their behalf. The Abu Nawas Group works closely with the British gay rights group OutRage! -- so, if you'd like to make a donation to the Abu Nawas Group, checks/cheques should be made payable to "OutRage!", with a cover note stating it is a donation for "Abu Nawas Iraqi LGBT - UK".

Mail your donation to:
OutRage!, PO Box 17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK.

Posted by Doug Ireland, New York