The two men, identified as Mokhtar N. and Ali A., were aged 24 and 25 years old respectively. They were hanged in public in Shahid Bahonar Square in Gorgan, the daily Kayhan wrote.
The newspaper said the criminal past of the two young men included kidnapping and rape, but the report made it clear that the crime for which they were hanged was lavat, which means homosexual relationship between two men or sodomy.
The execution of two homosexual teenagers in the city of Mashad in July provoked an international outcry. The hard-line government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vowed to follow a tougher line to implement Islamic law in Iran.
Under Irans Islamic Penal Code, homosexuality between consenting adults is a capital crime and official Iranian sources express hostility to homosexual practices. A state radio commentary on March 7, 2005 criticised gay marriages in Western countries. Ayatollah Ebrahim Amini, an influential cleric, said in his Friday-prayer sermon in Qom that gay and lesbian marriages reflect a weakness of Western culture, state television reported on July 13, 2002. Ayatollah Ali Meshkini in his Friday-prayer sermon in Qom criticised the German Green Party for being pro-homosexual, state television reported on April 29, 2000.
