On 14 November 2001 twenty three men were sentenced to hard labour prison sentences of between one and five years. Their crime - their sexual oreintation. The men had already been held in appalling conditions in the infamous Tora prison in Cairo for six months, tormented by other prisoners, their food thrown on the floor and many of them subjected to torture. WHAT'S HAPPENED SO FAR - A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TRIAL In the early hours of 11 May 2001 several hundred police descended on a floating discotheque on the Nile in Cairo, the Queen Boat, which was allegedly holding an informal gay night. In other words, most of the customers knew it was a gay evening, but it wasn't actually advertised as such. The police selectively arrested Egyptians, leaving several foreign tourists who were enjoying the dance undisturbed. The detained men, numbering fifty two, thirty five arrested on the boat and seventeen from other areas of Cairo, were subjected to torture and some badly beaten. Even the youngest, only fifteen and who it has been claimed was not at the disco when he was arrested, told a journalist he had been beaten with a "falaka" - a thick stick. This instrument of torture frequently leaves its victims unable to walk for days. Within a week, several Egyptian national newspapers had published a list of all those arrested together with their photographs and places of employment. The press also accused them of devil worship, being funded by foreigners, having links with Israel and of taking part in sex parties. These accusations were leveled even before the trial had begun. The trial itself began in pandemonium on 18 July as families and relatives were denied entrance to the court and the morale of the prisoners slumped as they discovered they were to be tried before a State Security Court [originally set up to deal with cases of terrorism and espionage] with no right of appeal. Then, as the trial unfolded, it was revealed that the very same police officers who were now bringing this case had brought an almost idential case the previous year in a civil court which the judge had then dismissed because of a complete absence of corroboration. But the bungled police operation and the many obvious inconsistencies in the prosecution's evidence didn't prevent twenty three of the fifty two prisoners being sentenced to prison sentences varying between one and five years on 14th November. [ For The Times news report click here or for The Guardian news report click here ] Then in late May 2002 Mubarak instructed a state security office to cancel all the verdicts in the Queen Boat case except for those of the alleged ringleader Farahat and Mahmoud A., both convicted for "perverting religion." On 23 June the Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram announced that all the other men who had stood trial in the case, those found "innocent" as well as those found "guilty", would have to stand trial again for "sexual depravity" at a downtown Cairo court. The case to commence on 2nd July. Meanwhile, according to our sources and also the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Committee, police actions against gay men in Cairo continued with mass arrests in two areas, Heliopolis and the Pyramids. The Egyptian police also escalated their campaign of entrapment through the internet. We only have information on a few of the arrests that are rumoured to have taken place in the months since the initial November Queen Boat trial verdict. Ironically the news of the first of these cases was leaked to the Egyptian press on the very day of the verdict. Four men had been arrested on 10 November in a so-called "den of perversion" in the Boulak suburb of Cairo. At a preliminary hearing the judge contemptuously instructed court officials - " Bring in the queers ! " [the actual word used - "Khawalat" - being in reality an even more derogatory term]. The verdict finally came in February 2002 . The four head shaven men all received three year sentences. The previous December [5th], two students, Sherif A and Islam A, received prison sentences of three months and one year respectively, after being lured by undercover police working the Yahoo internet chatroom to a location just outside the Ramses Hilton Hotel in Cairo. On 15 January 2002 a further eight men were arrested in the small town of Damanhour, south west of Alexandria. According to a highly senational account in the Egyptian newspaper Al Wafd investigators stormed an apartment to discover the defendants in "debauched positions." As in the Queen Boat case, all the men have been forced to undergo medical examinations. After their first hearing they had to undergo a "reception party" at Damanhour prison in which they were beaten as they ran a gauntlet of blows from ten prison guards encouraged by two prison officials. [ According to the World Organization Against Torture Report 8 March ]. Then, on 12 March, five of the eight men received three year prison sentences [ full report ]. An even greater surprise came just a month later, when on 13 April an appeals court found the men "not guilty" and they were released [ full report ]. Undoubtedly this small victory was the result of increasing international pressure but it is certain that arrests and intimidation of gay men will continue, but possibly without the media attention the previous arrests attracted. Unfortunately the government keeps a tight reign on the press and Mubarak appoints the editors of the country's three largest newspapers. This possible shift in tactics came too late for one man. On 25 January, just five days after the Damanhour raid, an advertiser on GayEgypt.com was arrested after an elaborate internet entrapment operation and brutally beaten into a confession. On 7 February he received a three year prison sentence. Then on 19 May 2002 a nineteen year old was arrested in downtown Cairo in another entrapment operation. He had tragically assumed the "cyber cop" he had corresponded with on the gay.com chat site to be a harmless fellow gay surfer. On 8 June 2002 he was sentenced to three years imprisonment. The cases we know about are undoubtedly only the "tip of an iceberg" and the probable number of gay men in prison must number in the hundreds if not thousands. But even so the ever mounting evidence of human rights abuses is shocking. The illegal detention of so many men, their apawling treatment and trial without right of appeal merely on the grounds of their sexual orientation, is one of Egypt's most blatant violations of the United Nations Charter on Human Rights to which the Egyptian Government itself is a signatory. But with world attention now focused on the war against terrorism, Mubarak believes he can get away with it. GayEgypt.com is determined not to let anyone forget so long as these men remain in prison and others continue to be intimidated, arrested and tortured. FEBRUARY 2003 UPDATE The winter 2002/2003, and especially February 2003, has seen an upsurge both in the number of arrests and the number of cases brought before the courts. For further details on the February arrests please click here. For GayEgypt.com's coverage of the 14 November verdict please click here For other gay news from Egypt, including the latest news, please click here  |