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July 9, 2008 7:07:32 AM CDT

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Brit Furor Over Asylum for Gay Iranian

Posted Mar 15, 08 10:45 AM CDT in World    Editor's Choice

(Newser) – A gay teenager who fears the death penalty at home in Iran, after his boyfriend was hanged for sodomy, is fighting for the right to stay in  the UK permanently, the Independent reports. Mehdi Kazemi, 19, lost his asylum claim in Britain and is now in a detention center in the Netherlands, but the British Home Secretary has bowed to pressure and agreed to reconsider. A Dutch court Tuesday said he could not claim asylum there.

“If I go back to Iran it will be most certainly death for me,” Kazemi said. During his British asylum appeal, the government claimed he would be safe in Iran if he was "discreet about his sexuality," the Independent notes. He responded that treatment of gays in Iran is "like a genocide no one will talk about." British Liberal Democrats want a “moratorium on deporting gay people to Iran,” said a spokesman; anything else, he said, would be “endorsing state-sanctioned murder.” 

Source Independent (UK)

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The leader of Britain's Liberal Democrat Party, Nick Clegg, right, shakes hands with party member Chris Huhne in London, Tuesday Dec. 18, 2007. Huhne advocates halting deportation of gay Iranians.   (AP Photo)
UK Home Secretary Jacqui Smith in Bournemouth, England, Thursday, Sept. 27, 2007. Smith says she will reconsider the deportation of Iranian teenager Mehdi Kazemi.   (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
Mehdi Kazemi, 19, says if he's deported from the UK he faces the death penalty in Iran, where Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says there are no gays.   (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
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No gays in Iran, says Ahmadinejad   (pundital (YouTube))

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Iran  • Great Britain  • United Kingdom  • England  • death penalty  • capital punishment  • Netherlands  • gay  • teenager  • deportation  • Jacqui Smith  • Liberal Democrats


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