Participants of a rally in defense of 10 Iran gays sentenced to capital punishment in that Islamic state were detained by Minsk authorities, reports Belorussian LGBT portal www.gay.by.

According to www.gay.by, Sergey Androsenko, Sergey Prad and Alexander Gagarin - the three activists of Belorussian public movement "GayBelarus", reached the premises of the Embassy of Iran in Minsk with posters "Stop murder of gays!" in English and Belarussian and handed over to the Embassy's officials a letter of protest calling to end prosecution of gay people in Iran.

Besides the above mentioned gay activists the local police have also detained Anastasia Shamro - a correspondent of local mass-media "Nasha Niva" (Our Field) who was later released after police ID check-up procedure.

"Four people who had been rallying in front of the Embassy of Iran in Minsk were detained in Soviet district local police station on the grounds of breaking the law on mass gatherings and rallies", "Interfax" quotes Minsk police authorities.

The main cause for this gay rally, according to www.gay.by, were pieces of information from human rights defense organizations that recently have made serious statements that Iran authorities detain 10 young Iran men (8 of them were sentenced to death penalty for "sodomy" and other two are waiting for their cases to be solved in the same way) only on the grounds that they are gays.

Translated by Yerdna Bananes