Iraqi Death Squads Round Up Gays

According to the British LGBT rights group Outrage, the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate for LGBT people. Outrage has been supporting an underground gay group in Baghdad which claims that Iraqi gays are being rounded up and killed.

Outrage says that five gay activists were abducted at gun-point by Iraqi police in Baghdad on 9 November and that nobody has heard from them since. The group fears that the men may have been murdered by death squads operating under the cover of the Iraqi police.

The men, ranging in age from 19 to 27 were identified only by their first names - Amjad, Rafid, Hassan, Ayman and Ali. All were members of Iraq's clandestine gay rights movement, Iraqi LGBT.

"For the last few months they had been documenting the killing of lesbians and gays, relaying details of homophobic executions to our office in London, and providing safe houses and support to queers fleeing the death squads," said Ali Hili, leader of Iraqi LGBT and Middle East spokesperson for Outrage.

Hili said that at the time of the police raid, the five men were holding a secret meeting in a safe house in the al-Shaab district of Baghdad and were on the phone with him.

"Suddenly there was a lot of noise, then the connection ended," Hili said.

Just days after these five activists were abducted, Haydar Kamel, aged 35, the owner of a well known men's clothing store in the al-Karada district of Baghdad, was kidnapped near his home in Sadr city. The kidnappers are alleged to have been members of the Mahdi army, an Islamist militia loyal to fundamentalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr.