The government granted political asylum to an Algerian gay man last week on the grounds that he risked imprisonment in his own country.
The 32-year-old man arrived to the mainland via Ceuta and took up residence in Seville where local gay groups took up his case. Gay men can be sentenced to three years in jail in Algeria, a lenient punishment.
Gay men in most Arab Moslem countries risk death but a group of moderate Moslem scholars is now trying to prove that the Koran has been interpreted too harshly on the question of homosexuality.
