A top opposition leader in former Soviet Azerbaijan has defended his track record as a heterosexual after accusing the oil-rich state’s authorities of launching a gay smear campaign against him.

“If anyone has doubts about my manliness, let them send me their wives and they will become convinced of my prowess for themselves,” the leader of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan party, Ali Kerimli, told journalists.

Kerimli called the press conference a day after a national television station aired comments suggesting the Popular Front leader had been raped while awaiting trial in a jail in 1994…