Gay activists outraged at ‘lie’

Two young men, believed to be aged 16 and 18, are seen shackled in a prison van, sobbing; one of them is then seen being led to a scaffold; other shots show the boys together with dark-hooded men placing nooses around the boys’ necks; and two final images show their bodies hanging from ropes, in a large public square, as a crowd watches from a distance.

But as human rights groups looked into the initial Iranian accounts, the waters muddied. The boys, identified as Ayaz Marhoni and Mahmoud Asgari, were said to have been convicted not for homosexual conduct but for raping a 13-year-old boy. Gay journalists, writing on blogs, cited sources in Iran who said that claim was a smoke screen used by the Iranian government to deflect outrage over the execution.

One account, again based on unnamed sources in Iran, suggested that a group of boys had been involved in consensual sexual activity and that the youngest of them (or members of his family) may have claimed he was coerced to avoid trouble for himself. In a country where an accusation of homosexuality is certain to bring harassment, often brings prison and torture, and occasionally brings death (by stoning, hanging, bisection with a sword or being dropped from a height, say gay rights groups), that scenario is plausible.

Scott Long of Human Rights Watch says that even a year later international groups know “very little” about what happened. The images are horrifying enough, he says, even if the boys were guilty of rape. “Nobody should trust the Iranian government on its face, but we can’t document that,” he says.

USA

Secret world sacks blogger

Christine Axsmith, a software contractor for the CIA, considered her blog a success. Only people with top-secret security clearances could read her musings, which were posted on Intelink, the intelligence community’s classified intranet. Writing as Covert Communications (CC), she opined in her online journal on such national security conundrums as stagflation, the war of ideas in the Middle East and bad food in the CIA cafeteria.

But the hundreds of blog readers who responded to her irreverent entries with titles such as Morale Equals Food won’t be joining her ever again.

On July 13, after she posted her views on torture and the Geneva Conventions, her blog was taken down and her security badge was revoked. Last Monday, Axsmith was terminated by her employer, BAE Systems, which was helping the CIA test software.

The day of the last post, Axsmith said, after reading a newspaper report that the CIA would join the rest of the US government in according Geneva Conventions rights to prisoners, she posted her views on the subject. It started, she said, something like this: “Waterboarding is Torture and Torture is Wrong.”

In recounting the events of her last day as an Intelink blogger, Axsmith said that she didn’t hold up well when the corporate security officers grilled her, seized her badge and put her in a frigid conference room. “I’m shaking. I’m cold, staring at the wall,” she recalled. “And worse, people are using the room as a shortcut, so I have no dignity in this crisis.”

She said she apologized right away and figured she would get reprimanded and her blog would be eliminated. She never dreamed she would be fired.