Gay Vigilantes in Iraq

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.

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.

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. I will carry this image with me until my dying day.

Iraqi gays are being targeted and killed in what rights campaigners say is some of the worst violence against the community in recent years.

At least 68 gay and transgendered men have been killed over the last four months, according to the London-based rights advocacy group Iraqi LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender), bringing the total number of killings of Iraqis because of their sexuality to 678 since 2004.

New York-based Human Rights Watch, which recently conducted field investigations on the violence, estimates that hundreds of homosexual men may have been killed in recent months. Scott Long, a senior Human Rights Watch representative, described the killings as an extraordinarily brutal campaign targeting gay, transgender and effeminate men in several provinces.

Iraqi LGBT and HRW believe that Shia militias are the primary perpetrators of the violence and say the majority of killings have occurred in Shia areas in south/central Iraq (including the towns of Ammarah, Najaf, Karbala and Basra) and Baghdad's Sadr City district, the stronghold of the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army.

While no group has said it's behind the killings, Iraqi LGBT and HRW believe that elements of the Mehdi Army may be among the militants implicated in the violence, particularly in Sadr City.

Long suggested that some members of Mehdi Army were trying to act as agents of moral regeneration in an attempt to regain some control over Shia neighbourhoods, following massive military operations that weakened the militia: It is pretty clear that sermons started being preached in Shia mosques, particularly ones in areas that are heavily influenced by the Sadrists earlier this year, on the dangers of homosexuality [in the weeks prior to the wave of killings].

Six gay men were shot dead by members of their tribe in two separate incidents in the past 10 days, an official with Iraq's Interior ministry said.

In the most recent attack, two men were killed in Sadr City area of Baghdad after they were disowned by relatives, the official said.

The shootings came after a tribal meeting was held and the members decided to go after the victims.

On March 26, four additional men were fatally shot in the same city, the official said, adding that the victims had also been disowned by their relatives.

Witnesses told CNN that a Sadr City cafe, which was a popular gathering spot for gays, was also set on fire.