Mehdi Kazemi, the gay Iranian teenager due to be deported back to Tehran where he would face almost certain execution, is to be allowed to stay in Britain because his case is now so notorious and dangerous.
Kazemi came to London to study English but later discovered from his father that his boyfriend had been arrested by Iranian police, charged with sodomy and hanged.

He applied for asylum in Britain last year, but when he was rejected he fled to the Netherlands, where he currently resides. Authorities on Tuesday rejected his appeal for asylum, and he is likely to be sent to Britain, where he lived from 2005 until last year.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, granted Mr Kazemi a temporary reprieve yesterday, announcing that his case would be reconsidered when he returns from the Netherlands. Mr Kazemi’s case has now received so much publicity in Europe and around the world that if he were sent back to Iran there would be a real risk of him facing persecution, as confirmed by EU lawmakers at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The Iranian authorities "routinely imprison, torture and execute homosexuals," the lawmakers said.

He is very much afraid of being allowed to stay in Britain but without being granted official permission.. he would be very unhappy in the long term.”

Ms Smith intervened after receiving such representations from MPs and peers alarmed that Mr Kazemi, 19, could face execution if returned to his homeland. In a statement Ms Smith said: “Following representations made on behalf of Mehdi Kazemi, and in the light of new circumstances since the original decision was made, I have decided that Mr Kazemi’s case should be reconsidered on his return to the UK from the Netherlands.”

Mr Kazemi’s solicitor in the Netherlands, Borg Palm, has reportedly welcomed the intervention by Ms Smith but said that it would give his client a future only if he was granted asylum.

“I am very happy, and I am sure that my client will also be very happy, once he comes to learn of this, but we will also be reluctant to start celebrating too quickly. He is very much afraid of being allowed to stay in Britain but without being granted official permission. That would then put him in a no man’s land. He would be very unhappy in the long term.”

The teenager's case has become a campaign cause for gay rights activists across Europe.
More than 4,000 gay men and lesbians have been executed in Iran since 1979, according to human rights campaigners from the country. Ben Summerskill, of the British-based gay rights group Stonewall, said of the news: "We are obviously delighted that the home secretary has listened to the representations that were made in this case.”

Home Office officials will reexamine Mr Kazemi’s case, and will base their decision on guidance issued last year, after his 2006 asylum application was turned down.

It states: “Where an individual claimant demonstrates that their homosexual acts have brought them to the attention of the authorities to the extent that on return to Iran they will face a real risk of punishment, which will be so harsh as to amount to persecution, s/he should be granted refugee status as a member of a particular social group.

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