On this date in 2005, two teenagers were hanged in Mashhad, Iran.

Affecting photos of these two youths, their faces etched in fright and grief, their 16- and 18-year-old bodies pitifully boyish next to their executioners, became an immediate worldwide sensation.

These shocking images were quickly followed by a storm of controversy. The crime for which Asgari and Marhoni swung was the rape of a 13-year-old while both the offenders were themselves minors; gay organizations and human rights groups subsequently became mired in contentious dispute over whether (as a factual, legal, or tactical matter) they could be said to have succumbed to a “lethal reign of terror targeting Iranian gays”. For instance, was the conviction reliable, or a pretext? Would these boys actually have self-identified as “gay”?

To that were added charges and countercharges among western campaigners of racism, imperial lickspittle-ism, objective-pro-Islamic-fascism, and the like. Like, awfully convenient that Iran’s longtime dim view of homosexuality has everyone exercised at just the moment bombing Tehran was being openly mooted.

But whatever the text: those pictures. Still, those pictures.

It is certain that both Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni were juvenile offenders, whose execution is anathema almost everywhere in the world but Iran — just one of that country’s unique characteristics.

On this day..

• 1943: The hanging of the twelve - 2020
• 1597: Anneke van den Hove, buried alive - 2019
• 1550: Jacopo Bonfadio, indiscreet - 2018
• 1975: Dr. Mohamed Forna, former Finance Minister of Sierra Leone - 2017
• 1783: Diego Cristobal Tupac Amaru, rebel heir - 2016
• 1762: Sarah Metyard and Sally Metyard, mother and daughter - 2015
• 1476: Hans Bohm, the Drummer of Niklashausen - 2014
• 1909: Dervish Vahdeti, for the 31 March Incident - 2013
• 2011: A day in the death penalty around the world - 2012
• 1776: Jamaican slave rebels - 2011
• 1824: Agustin de Iturbide, Emperor of Mexico - 2010
• 1824: Alexander Pearce, cannibal convict - 2008