(New York City) Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to insist there are no gays in Iran, but says if there were they would not be prosecuted as long as they were closeted.
Ahmadinejad caused a stir last year during a speech at Columbia University when he declared there were no homosexuals in Iran.
“In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like you do in your country. We do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have it,” Ahmadinejad said at the time.
Tuesday night the Iranian president was questioned about the controversial remarks by CNN’s Larry King.
“I said it is not the way it is here. In Iran this is considered a very - obviously, most people dislike it. And we have, actually, a law regarding it and the law is enforced,” he told King.
Ahmadinejad went on to claim “we do pay attention that in Iran nobody interferes in the private lives of individuals. We have nothing to do with the private realm of people. This is at the - non-private, public morality. In their own house, nobody ever interferes.”
Ahmadinejad was in New York where he spoke at the United Nations earlier on Tuesday, declaring that the “American empire in the world is reaching the end of its road,” and denouncing Israel.
Iran’s persecution of gays has been documented by exiles and international rights groups.
Last year in a meeting between Iranian and British parliamentarians, a high ranking Iranian politician for the first time acknowledged that the Islamic state upholds the death penalty for homosexuality.
The disclosure was made in private but appeared in minutes of the meeting obtained by The Times newspaper.
Iranian law provides punishments up to death for penetrative same-sex sexual activity between men on the first conviction, and punishes non-penetrative activity with up to 100 lashes.
Homosexual conduct between women is punishable with death on the fourth conviction. Iran’s Penal Code requires four reiterated confessions, or the testimony of four “righteous men” as eyewitnesses, to prove lavat, or sodomy. However, judges are permitted to accept circumstantial evidence or inference.
Some international gay rights groups believe that more than 4,000 lesbians and gay men have been executed since the Ayatollahs seized power in 1979.
In 2005, two young men were hanged in a public square in northern Iran after they allegedly were found guilty of homosexuality. The government claimed they had been convicted of kidnapping and raping a male teen.
Hundreds of others have been rounded up and allegedly imprisoned, many of them as a result of raids on private homes. None of the allegations has been confirmed by independent sources.
*By 365gay Newscenter Staff
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