Nigerian men whipped for gay sex

Four young men have been convicted of gay sex and whipped publicly as punishment in an Islamic court in northern Nigeria, according to a human-rights activist.

The four were sentenced and punished with 15 strokes on Thursday. They also face imprisonment for a year if they cannot pay a fine of $120.

The men, aged between 20 and 22, should not have been convicted because their confessions were forced through beatings, said Dorothy Aken'Ova, the convener of the Coalition for the Defense of Sexual Rights Network.

She said they had to prostrate themselves on the floor of the court to be whipped on their bottoms.

Aken'Ova said the families refused an offer of legal representation and were embarrassed by the stigma attached to homosexuality, which many Nigerians consider an evil imported from the West.

The four were among dozens caught in a wave of arrests after Nigeria strengthened its criminal penalties for homosexuality with the new Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act in January.

In a report on Queer Nigerian refugees living in New York City, Al Jazeera's Lisa De Bode explained that since the harsh measure was passed, there have been an increasing number of reports of extortion and attacks on gay people by police and what advocates have called "neighborhood vigilantes."

The Thursday hearings in Bauchi, the capital city of the state of the same name, had been delayed from January when a crowd tried to stone the accused men outside the court and demanded the judge pass the death sentence. Security officials had to fire into the air to save the men and disperse the crowd.

Under Islamic law in some north Nigerian states, homosexuals can be sentenced to death by stoning or lethal injection, a sentence that has never been enforced.

The judge said he was lenient because the men had promised that the homosexual acts occurred in the past and that they had since changed their ways, according to Aken'Ova.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press