By Lucas Grindley

Originally published on Advocate.com September 05 2011 9:31 PM ET

Three men were executed in Iran on Sunday for having gay sex, according to Iran Human Rights, an organization that monitors state news there.

The group noted in a blog post today that the state-run Iranian news agency, ISNA, reports that three people who were hanged had been convicted of sodomy and other crimes such as robbery. A Sharia judge is allowed to decide how to kill any man who violates the anti-sodomy article of the law.

IHR says the men were identified in the report only by initials: "M.T.", "T.T." and M. Ch."

IHR spokesman Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said these were "rare cases" in which the Iranian government had put someone to death explicitly for homosexual acts. "Iranian authorities normally present such cases as rape," Amiry-Moghaddam said in a statement.

So far, IHR is the only group reporting these deaths.

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
once famously told a reporter during a news conference that, ''In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your
country. We don't have that in our country. In Iran, we do
not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you
that we have it.''