Johannesburg, South Africa:

Muhsin Hendricks, considered the world’s first openly gay imam, was shot dead Saturday near the southern city of Gqeberha, South African police said. The imam, who ran a mosque intended as a safe haven for gay and other marginalised Muslims, was in a car with another person when a vehicle stopped in front of them and blocked their exit, police said.

“Two unknown suspects with covered faces got out of the vehicle and started firing multiple shots at the vehicle,” the Eastern Cape force said in a statement. 

“Thereafter they fled the scene, and the driver noticed that Hendricks, who was seated at the back of the vehicle was shot and killed.”

A police spokeswoman confirmed to AFP the authenticity of a video on social media that purported to show a targeted killing in Bethelsdorp near Gqeberha, formerly known as Port Elizabeth.

“The motive for the murder is unknown and forms part of the ongoing investigation,” police said, urging anybody with information to come forward.

The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association denounced the killing. “The ILGA World family is in deep shock at the news of the murder of Muhsin Hendricks, and calls on authorities to thoroughly investigate what we fear may be a hate crime,” executive director Julia Ehrt said in a statement.

Hendricks, involved in various LGBTQ advocacy groups, came out as gay in 1996. He ran the Al-Ghurbaah mosque at Wynberg near his birthplace Cape Town.

The mosque provides “a safe space in which queer Muslims and marginalised women can practise Islam”, its website states.

Hendricks, the subject of a 2022 documentary called “The Radical”, had previously alluded to threats against him.

But he insisted that “the need to be authentic” was “greater than the fear to die”. 

South Africa has one of the world’s highest murder rates, with some 28,000 murders in the year to February 2024, according to police data.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

At least seven people were fined in Russia for “looking too gay” after a police raid on a nightclub in Tula in February, an analysis of court records by an independent Russian media outlet showed.

They were reportedly hit with charges of ‘trying to arouse interest in non-traditional sexual relations’, which has been outlawed in Russia for a decade.

This charge is mainly directed at those publishing pro-LGBT material – not at those wearing ‘unmanly’ clothing.

Video footage of the police raid shows men in military-style uniforms and helmets detain at least eight people, the Telegraph reports. 

The detainees reportedly wore clothing that police suspected promoted ‘non-traditional sexual relations’, according to Verstka.

One man reportedly wore ‘crosses of black tape glued to his nipples’ and a ‘women’s style corset’ on his ‘naked’ body, said a report. Another sported ‘bright orange’ hair and ‘red tattoos on his face’, wore ‘pink socks’ as well as ‘an unbuttoned kimono’, it added.

The arrests come as the Kremlin further pushes its anti-LGBT crackdown in its bid to promote ‘traditional values’, which includes a ban on ‘propaganda promoting a child-free lifestyle’.

A man reportedly wore a crop top, black leather shorts and fishnet tights, noted another description.

The detainees’ clothing was promoting a ‘non-traditional’ sexual lifestyle and their appearance was ‘inconsistent with the image of a man with traditional sexual orientation’, the judges were reported to have said. 

While eight people were detained, only seven received a fine – the eight, a male bartender, avoided a fine after arguing that he was goth.

This is not the only time Russian authorities arrested partygoers. In November, police reportedly raided several bars and nightclubs in Moscow under the laws criminalising ‘LGBT propaganda’.

The decade-old legislation under which they were punished is often called Russia’s ‘anti-gay law’.