Dozens Of Gays Reportedly Arrested In Iran
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff

(New York City) A western LGBT organization for gay Iranians says it has learned police have arrested as many as 87 gays at a private house party.

The Toronto-based Iranian Queer Organization, IRQO, said the arrests were made in Isfahan and that it learned of the arrests from "colleagues in Shiraz and Isfahan".

IRQO said that police converged on the house where a man identified only as Farhad was celebrating his birthday.

The report said that police brutally assaulted the man and others, including his parents, on May 10.

Everyone at the party were arrested on the spot said IRQO. The first report put the number of those arrested at 80, the organization said, adding that more recent reports have raised the number to 87.

“I went to buy a gift for Farhad and so I arrived late for the party. As soon as I turned in to their street, I saw police cars parked everywhere," a man identified as Peyman told IRQO in a telephone call.

The organization seldom releases the full names of gays in Iran out of concerns for their safety.

"All my friends were arrested while seven or eight policeman beat them with batons. Fearing the usual punishments for attending a party, two had jumped from the second-floor window and were in a bad condition," the man told IRQO.

The man also told the organization that the detainees' "cell phones are off and we have no information about the situation inside the jail.”

In another phone call to IRQO another guest identified as Kia said that  “Guests had come from Shiraz, Tehran, Shahin Shahr to Isfahan for Farhad’s birthday. When they were coming out of the house followed by the police, their clothes were ripped, their faces and bodies were covered in blood. They were beaten up badly.”

IRQO said that on Sunday it received news that the arrestees were being tortured in jail and that their lives were in danger.

Homosexuality is a capital crime under Sharia, or Islamic, law.

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.

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