Etter at borgerkrigen i Irak er over, og sentralregjeringen har fått en grad av kontroll, har militsene og fanatikerne blitt arbeidsledige. De har gått over fra å slåss om makten til å agere moralpoliti. Særlig overfor gays og lesbiske er de aktive: de spores opp og drepes, ofte etter grusom tortur.

Islamistene bruker utstuderte metoder: de går inn på chatterom på nettet og utgir seg for homofile selv. Slike spores den ene etter den andre opp. Pårørende finner ille tilredte lik, og de gjenværende homofile tør ikke gå ut. De som har midler flykter til utlandet.

Sitting on the floor, wearing traditional Islamic clothes and holding an old notebook, Abu Hamizi, 22, spends at least six hours a day searching internet chatrooms linked to gay websites. He is not looking for new friends, but for victims.

«It is the easiest way to find those people who are destroying Islam and who want to dirty the reputation we took centuries to build up,» he said. When he finds them, Hamizi arranges for them to be attacked and sometimes killed.

Hamizi, a computer science graduate, is at the cutting edge of a new wave of violence against gay men in Iraq. Made up of hardline extremists, Hamizi’s group and others like it are believed to be responsible for the deaths of more than 130 gay Iraqi men since the beginning of the year alone.

The deputy leader of the group, which is based in Baghdad, explained its campaign using a stream of homophobic invective. «Animals deserve more pity than the dirty people who practise such sexual depraved acts,» he told the Observer. «We make sure they know why they are being held and give them the chance to ask God’s forgiveness before they are killed.»
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The killings are brutal, with victims ritually tortured. Azhar al-Saeed’s son was one. «He didn’t follow what Islamic doctrine tells but he was a good son,» she said. «Three days after his kidnapping, I found a note on my door with blood spread over it and a message saying it was my son’s purified blood and telling me where to find his body.»

She went with police to find her son’s remains. «We found his body with signs of torture, his anus filled with glue and without his genitals,» she said. «I will carry this image with me until my dying day.»

How Islamist gangs use internet to track, torture and kill Iraqi gays

Iraqi militias infiltrate internet gay chatrooms to hunt their quarry – and hundreds are feared to be victims