Egypt: End Internet Entrapment, Homosexual Prosecutions
Human
Rights Watch, February 21, 2003
“For two years now, the Egyptian
authorities have conducted an on-going campaign of harassment against
suspected homosexuals. “The police are raiding private homes and using
the Internet to entrap men on trumped-up charges of ‘debauchery.’
People looking for support and community find a prison cell instead.”
—Joe Stork, Washington Director of
the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch
New York—A February 17 appeals
court ruling in Egypt may signal an increasingly harsh campaign of entrapment,
arrest and conviction of men solely on the basis of alleged consensual
homosexual conduct, Human Rights Watch said today.
Human Rights Watch urged the Egyptian authorities to
conduct a fair review of all sentences handed down in such cases, and to free
from prison anyone convicted solely for private, consensual conduct among
adults. “For two years now, the Egyptian authorities have conducted an
on-going campaign of harassment against suspected homosexuals,” said Joe
Stork, Washington director of the Middle East and North Africa division of
Human Rights Watch. “The police are raiding private homes and using the
Internet to entrap men on trumped-up charges of ‘debauchery.’ People
looking for support and community find a prison cell instead.”
On February 17, a Cairo appeals court upheld a penal
sentence against Wissam Toufic Abyad, a 26 year-old Lebanese citizen. Police
arrested Abyad on January 16 in Cairo’s Heliopolis district after he had
arranged to meet with “Raoul,” whom he had met through the gay
personals-advertisements site www.gaydar.com. Undercover police and informants
have used the nickname “Raoul” in several other cases to entrap suspected
homosexual men.
The Heliopolis Court of Misdemeanors convicted Abyad on
January 20 on charges of the “habitual practice of debauchery [fujur]”
under Article 9(c) of Law 10/1961 on the Combating of Prostitution, a charge
commonly used in Egypt against private, consensual homosexual conduct. The
court also convicted him of advertising “against public morals” under
Article 178 of the Penal Code; and “inciting passers-by” on a “public
road or traveled or frequented place. . . to commit indecent acts [fisq]”
under Article 269 of the Penal Code-both referring to his having placed a
personals advertisement on the Internet site. These charges are commonly used
to criminalize the _expression of homosexual identity.
Many recent cases of Internet entrapment of suspected
homosexuals have led to convictions in the first instance that were later
reversed on appeal. Human Rights Watch is concerned that the appeals court’s
decision in the Abyad case may signal increasing harshness in the application
of the law.
Human Rights Watch is also concerned by the continuing
imprisonment of Zaki Saad Zaki Abd al-Malak, a 23-year-old resident of
Ismailia who was arrested under similar circumstances over a year ago. In
January 2002, after corresponding with a man through an MSN chatroom, Malak
came to Cairo. On January 25, at their prearranged meeting place on a street
in the Mohandiseen district, Vice Squad officers arrested Malak. He told human
rights activists that he was beaten daily by police during two weeks of
detention in the Agouza Police Station. At one meeting with his lawyer he
still had dried blood crusting his face.
On February 7, 2002, Malak was sentenced to three
years’ imprisonment, followed by three years’ supervision, under the same
three charges used against Wissam Abyad. The sentence was upheld on appeal. A
further appeal is pending before the Cassation Court, Egypt’s highest
judicial review body. Meanwhile, Malak is being held in Borg al-Arab prison
near Alexandria.
In a separate hearing, scheduled for February 23, 2003, a
court of appeals will rule in the case of twelve men sentenced to three
years’ imprisonment on the charge of “habitual practice of debauchery”
in November 2002. All were arrested on August 20, 2002, when police raided
what they described as a gay party in an apartment in Cairo’s Mohandiseen
district. Ten of the men were sentenced for practicing consensual,
non-commercial sex with male adults. Although two of the men confessed to
having practiced commercial sex, Judge Mohieddin Atrees stressed in his
verdict that homosexual conduct—”debauchery”—was a criminal offense
even in the absence of financial gain.
In another case, six men were arrested in January 2003 in
a private apartment in Port Said and charged with the “habitual practice of
debauchery.” All six were subjected to forensic medical examinations which
found them “used,” and were sentenced approximately two weeks ago to six
months’ imprisonment. An appeals hearing in the case will be held on
February 26.
Egypt’s most notorious “gay trial,” of fifty-two
men arrested at the Queen Boat discotheque in May 2001, is also drawing to a
close. In November 2001, after a process marked by lurid publicity in the
state-controlled press, twenty-three of the men were convicted and given
sentences of between one and five years’ imprisonment. Their case was heard
before an Emergency State Security Court, whose verdicts under Egypt’s
emergency legislation allow no ordinary appeal. President Hosni Mubarak, who
as military governor must review all verdicts of this court, later cancelled
innocent and guilty verdicts alike for fifty of the Queen Boat defendants,
resulting in a retrial of these cases before an ordinary court. That court has
announced it will hand down its decision on March 15.
“This routine of harassment and persecution has gone on
far too long,” Stork said. “The authorities should halt such arrests and
stop the criminalization of consensual private sexual relations.”
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