The 20-year-old Iranian had hoped to escape the country, where he felt stifled by the Iranian regime's restrictions on homosexuality, and had dreams of modeling or becoming a make-up artist, his partner Aghil Abiat told CNN. In long phone calls and video messages with Abiat -- who is a refugee in Turkey after being outed in Iran -- Fazeli-Monfared would describe the experiences he longed to have and the life he wanted to build.
Always seething in the background, however, was building family pressure and Iran's draconian laws against homosexuality that make same-sex relations a potential capital offense."He was always stressed. He bit his nails so there were never any left," Abiat recalled. Military exemption cards have become weaponized against the LGBTQ community, according to 6Rang."These exemption cards are issued through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Alireza received one ... indicating that he was gay, which is permissible under ... the military exemption laws. Unfortunately, in Alireza's case, this selection cost him his life," the advocacy group said in a statement.
By May 4, Abiat had begun to worry. Fazeli-Monfared's phone was not online. When he called no one picked up. When he read reports of his partner's murder, he didn't believe them. A friend also called to tell him the news but Abiat still refused to believe it. "Mama Ali, this is Aghil, we talked couple of months back. What are people talking about? What are all these stupid things they are saying about Alireza ... I can't believe this ... Please tell me that it's a lie," Abiat wrote in a message followed by crying emojis.Abiat and Mama Ali continued to text back and forth. When she got overwhelmed, Fazeli-Monfared's aunt took over and explained the details in a voice message."We found his body after two days. We found him ..
The aunt told Abiat that the alleged murderers also phoned her to say what they'd done."They killed him ... and the same night they called and said that they killed him," she wrote in a text message.
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