Egyptian Police Entrap Gay Men Through Internet
Gay Financial Network,
January 10, 2003
http://www.gfn.com/news/story.phtml?sid=12858
Egyptian police arrested a 30-year-old gay man after chatting with him on
an Internet site he used to seek potential partners and, posing as gay men,
lured him to meet them, police said Thursday.
The man, whose name was not given, was an employee at a upscale Cairo hotel
and had posted pictures of himself on the Web site calling himself a
"single dreamer."
Police, in an undercover operation, chatted with the man over the Internet
passing themselves off as a potential lover and arranged to meet with him.
At the meeting place, they arrested him.
On December 22, a gay dentist was arrested in the same manner.
Although homosexuality is not explicitly prohibited under Egyptian law
which is based on sharia or Islamic law, authorities use "public
morality" statutes as a ruse to harass, arrest and prosecute gay men.
On January 25, 50 Egyptians rounded up in May 2001 at an evening boat party
on the Nile and accused of gay sex will appear for another hearing in their
re-trial.
Nearly half of them were sentenced to jail in November 2001, but in May
President Hosni Mubarak ordered their retrial saying the case did not fall
under the jurisdiction of the state security court.
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