For gays in Iraq, a life of constant fear

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-fg-iraqgay5aug05,1,1746788.story?coll=chi_tab01_layout

Since the U.S.-led invasion, homosexuals have been increasingly targeted by militias and police, human rights groups say.

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske | Times Staff Writer
August 5, 2007

BAGHDAD — Samir Shaba sits in a restaurant, nervously describing gay life in Iraq. He speaks in a low voice, occasionally glancing over his shoulder.

The heavyset, clean-shaven Christian says that before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, he frequented the city's gay blogs, online chat rooms and dance clubs, where he wore flashy tight clothes, his hair long and loose to his shoulders. snip

In October 2005, Iraq's leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, on his website forbidding homosexuality and declaring that gays and lesbians should be "punished, in fact, killed."

"The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way," the decree said.

The fatwa against gay men was removed from Sistani's website last year, but it was not revoked, said Ali Hili, an Iraqi gay-rights activist living in London who petitioned Sistani's office to remove it.