Iran's solution for gays: under the direction of ultraconservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Republic of Iran, gays and lesbians are being tortured and executed like never before.

After his arrest for homosexual activity, 22-year-old gay Iranian Amir says he was taken to the police station and asked to sit in a metal chair in the middle of a room. "The police put a gas flame under the chair and made me sit on it as the metal seat got hotter and hotter," he recalls. "The commander said to take a bottle and shove it up my ass while screaming, 'This will teach you not to want any more cock.'"

When Mekabiz, 21, a self-described transgender man, appeared before an Iranian judge, he was told that he was "dirtier and lower than a pig," and sentenced to 60 lashes and three months in prison. "I had never suffered so much in my life," Nekabiz says. "Every single prisoner in my section raped me--all of them. The guards just laughed. They even carved graffiti on my backside with a knife--on one side they wrote, SOUVENIR FROM VAKIL ABAD PRISON. YOU can't imagine what kind of hell I went through. I prayed for God to kill me."

Amir and Mekabiz are among the thousands of gay and transgender victims of the reactionary regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the Islamic Republic of Iran, who took power a year ago on a platform of "moral cleansing." Since Ahmadinejad's election, the government has employed a thuggish para-police force known as the basiji to expose and arrest gay people.

Many of the basiji, who operate under the control of the Interior Ministry, are attractive young men who use Internet chat rooms to post their pictures and ensnare gay men. That's what happened to Amir, who recently escaped to Canada. When he showed up for a rendezvous with a man he met on the Internet, he was immediately arrested and then jailed and tortured. "They threatened to send me to an army barracks where all the soldiers were going to rape me," he says.

After every arrest, torture is used to extract the names of other gay people. According to several sources the Interior Ministry has compiled a list containing the names of thousands of gay men, many of whom have been arrested and are kept under constant surveillance.

In many cases arrested gays are tortured until they confess to "crimes" they never committed. Fabricated charges--usually of rape--are used to justify public executions. Observers believe that was the case in the public hanging of two gay teenagers (reportedly age 16 and 18) in the city of Mashad in July 2005. Since then there have been at least 14 public executions of gay men and one report of the execution of a lesbian couple.

Gay couple Mojtaba, 27, and Mehmed, 25, organized a secret wedding ceremony before 25 of their friends, but they were turned in by a police informant. Mehmed was arrested and thrown into prison, but Mojtaba managed to escape to Turkey, where he lives in constant fear of being deported. "After the election of Ahmadinejad, the situation for gays has become so much worse," Mojtaba says. "To be gay and Iranian is worse than anything. I'm paralyzed with fear. And I have no news of my beloved Mehmed. If they execute him, what will I do with my guilt? Should I stay here in Turkey to die in isolation, or go back to Iran and be prepared for execution?"