Egypt Sentences 21 on Gay Sex Charges
Advocate,
March 18, 2003
A criminal court in Egypt sentenced 21 men to three years
in jail Saturday on charges stemming from a suspected gay sex party in a case
condemned by Egyptian and international human rights groups as persecution of
gay people. Officials told the Associated Press that another 29 men were
acquitted in the retrial, which began in July following an order by Egyptian
president Hosni Mubarak. The officials said the defendants were not in court
to hear the verdicts, but their lawyers attended. The 21 men were sentenced to
three years in jail on charges of practicing debauchery, the officials said.
The defendants are among 52 men arrested in a May 2001
police raid on a Nile riverboat restaurant on suspicion they had taken part in
a gay sex party. The Emergency State Security Court initially sentenced 23 of
them in November 2001 to jail terms ranging from one to five years. The rest
were acquitted. Mubarak, in his capacity as Egypt’s military ruler, last May
ordered 50 of the men—including the 29 acquitted—to be retried on the
debauchery counts before a lower court, annulling the original verdicts,
because the emergency courts did not have the jurisdiction to hear the
charges.
Human rights groups and the international community have
denounced the trials and condemned Egypt, where homosexuality is met with zero
tolerance. Homosexuality is not explicitly referred to in the Egyptian legal
system, but a wide range of laws covering obscenity, prostitution, and public
morality are punishable by jail terms.
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