Men Jailed Over ‘ Gay Sex Party’
Ananova,
March 15, 2003
An Egyptian criminal court has sentenced 21 men to three
years in jail on charges stemming from a suspected gay sex party.
The case has been condemned by international human rights
groups as a persecution of homosexuals.
Officials said another 29 men have been acquitted in the
retrial, which began in July following an order by Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak.
The defendants were not in court to hear the verdicts,
but their lawyers attended.
The 21 were sentenced to three years in jail on charges
of practising debauchery.
The defendants were among 52 men arrested in a May 2001
police raid on a Nile boat restaurant on suspicion that 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.
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