Reports via The Jerusalem Post are stating that a gay man was sentenced and hung last week for committing the crime of “sodomy” with another man in Iran.

According to JP via Pink News Iran’s judiciary imposed the death penalty on a man only identified as Ch. M. in  Marvdasht, Fars province, on April 19 “for allegedly engaging in ‘sodomy’ with  another man

Gholamhossein Chamansara, the attorney-general of Marvdasht, told  the government-controlled Iranian Fars News Agency that a man (Ch. M.)  was sentenced to death because of his “despicable/heinous act that contradicted  Shari’a Muslim laws.”

The Iranian Human Rights  Activists News Agency (HRAN) stated that the reference to ‘despicable/ heinous  act’ indicates that the death penalty was carried due to same-sex acts. However  the judiciary regulatory office in Fars Province was unwilling to give more  precise information about the case and the type of sexual activities of the  executed man.

The British Guardian earlier this month translated remarks from Grand Ayatollah Abdollah  Javadi-Amoli, who said, “Even animals… dogs and pigs don’t engage in this  disgusting act [homosexuality], but yet they [Western politicians] pass laws in  favor of them in their parliaments.”

In an interview last week with the Die Welt am Sonntag,  Prime Minister of Israel Binyamin Netanyahu commented on Iran’s human rights  record.  “After all they stone women, they hang gays – this is a backward,  dark medieval regime that imposes its tyranny on its own people. Shoots them on  the sidewalk, goes into their homes, culls the Internet, takes people away at  night,” he said.

LGBT human rights activists have been loudly critical in recent months of the  Human Rights Watch for failing to focus on the rise of  persecution of gays in the Islamic Republic and elsewhere in more “civilized” sections of the Middle East like Saudia Arabia, Jordan, and Eqypt where homosexuality is punished by long prison terms and possibly death.