The trial that never was. A court gives defendants in the Queen Boat retrial the maximum penalty Annik M. Lussier To connect to the Cairo Times website please click on cairotimes.com. On a spring night in May 2001, Adam (not his real name) was sitting on his own in the restaurant on the Queen Boat in Zamalek sipping a drink. Minutes later, police raided the establishment and he was rounded up along with dozens of others and taken to the police station. Two years later, he and 20 others have been convicted for the second time of the "habitual practice of debauchery" in the so-called Queen Boat trial. But Adam and the others who were detained that night, never took to the stand to explain what happened, and defense lawyers never presented their arguments. The final session at the Abdeen courthouse on 15 March lasted only a couple of minutes. British, American and Canadian diplomats sat in the courtroom awaiting the decision as did a few, mostly foreign, journalists. The names of the accused were read aloud, and the judge stated his verdict moments later. Twenty-one men were convicted and sentenced to three years in prison and three years probation–the maximum penalty and a stiffer sentence than what was handed down at the first trial. Twenty-nine were acquitted. "Clearly this is an instance where stigma, moral revulsion and prejudice overrode the whole procedure," said Scott Long, Egypt researcher for Human Rights Watch and former program director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. "There’s no substantial evidence under the law against some of the defendants, who were convicted in this case to arbitrarily harshen their sentences without reading defense memos and without inviting defense arguments," said Long. "This is indefensible." Egyptian human rights groups, including the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation and Management of Victims of Violence and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, issued a joint statement underlining their "astonishment and outrage over the decision by a judge to impose harsher sentences on people convicted of consensual homosexual conduct." Wearing a wedding ring on his finger, Adam, who spoke to the Cairo Times on condition of anonymity, insists he is not gay. "I have a wife and children," he said. The Queen Boat was simply a place he enjoyed because of the cheap prices, he added. "I knew some of the men on the boat that night were gay, but nobody was doing anything like the police made them out to be." He alleges he and the others were taken to the police station, beaten until he could no longer take it and coerced into a forced confession. "I had to say my name, my job, my address and say ‘I am gay.’" The first trial took place at the State Security Court-Emergency, a judicial body set up under Emergency Law where defendants have no right to appeal. At that time, 52 men were on trial for the same charge. Though it is taboo, homosexuality is not explicitly illegal under Egyptian law but consensual gay relations have been prosecuted under morality laws–notably, the "debauchery" charge found in a 1961 law on prostitution. Government officials in the past explained that the trial was not about homosexuality but prostitution and acts of public lewdness and that heterosexuals would have suffered the same fate. In November 2001, 23 allegedly gay men were sentenced to one or two years in prison. Two of the men considered to be ringleaders were sentenced to longer terms on charges of insulting religion. The others were acquitted. International human rights groups decried the decision and charged that Egypt was persecuting gays. Then, in June 2002, Egypt’s Military Governor ordered a retrial for 50 of them–including those who were acquitted–to be held this time in a regular criminal court. The reasoning was that emergency courts did not have the jurisdiction to hear these kinds of charges. In the retrial that began in July 2002, police officers responsible for the arrests were called in to testify, but never showed up. Police station records that the defense had requested also never came. "It’s underestimating people’s intelligence to say that they were having intimate relations in public, in a restaurant," said Aida Seif Al Dowla of the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation and Management of Victims of Violence. "The way the process went on without witnesses or defense arguments is shocking and is inexplicable. For me personally, the whole Queen Boat case is inexplicable–I don’t understand." This verdict sends a message that a crackdown on gay men in Egypt continues, said Long of Human Rights Watch, pointing to recent convictions of gay men entrapped by the police on the internet. "There’s been a period of six months to a year where the attention has been diverted from what is going on in Egypt and I think the government is saying we’re going to continue the harassment and we’re going to continue the persecution." Defense lawyers are waiting for the court to set a date for the appeal hearing. The defendants remain free on bail. |