Egypt sentences 5 men for homo***uality By MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated
Press Writer
Wed Apr 9, 4:37 PM ET
CAIRO, Egypt - An Egyptian court convicted five men Wednesday on charges
of
homo***ual behavior and sentenced them to three years in prison, officials
said.
Defense lawyer, Adel Ramadan, said the judge found the men guilty of the
"habitual practice of debauchery" — a term used in the Egyptian legal
system to denote consensual homo***ual acts.
The convictions were confirmed by a judicial official, who spoke on
condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to
journalists.
Homo***uality is not explicitly referred to in Egypt's legal code, but a
wide range of laws covering obscenity, prostitution and debauchery are
applied to homo***uals in this conservative country.
The five men were arrested in what human rights groups describe as a
crackdown on people with the AIDS virus, using the debauchery charges as a
means to prosecute them.
Four of the five men tested HIV-positive after all were forced to undergo
blood tests in custody, Human Rights Watch says. The New York-based rights
group issued a statement Tuesday signed by more than 100 other
organizations around the world condemning the prosecutions.
Ramadan, a lawyer with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said
the five men were abused and tortured over the past several months to
"extract confessions" from them.
In addition to their prison time, the men were sentenced to an additional
three years of police supervision, meaning they will have to spend every
night at a police station, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., the lawyer said.
Ramadan said the four HIV-positive defendants were shocked by their
convictions.
"Two of them cried, screamed and shrieked," he said. "The other two, they
remained silent, but I saw anger in their eyes for the injustice they have
been exposed to."
Ramadan said he appealed the verdict to Egypt's Court of Cassation, the
country's highest appellate court.
Dozens of human rights groups have criticized this trial and other similar
ones as being driven by ignorance and fear of AIDS. They have warned that
the convictions could undermine AIDS prevention in Egypt.
The five convicted Wednesday were among 12 people arrested in a sweep that
began in October, when police arrested a man during an altercation with
another man on a Cairo street, Human Rights Watch said.
After one of the men said he was HIV-positive, authorities opened
investigations into other men whose names or contact information were
uncovered in interrogations of the first group of men, Human Rights Watch
said.
Egyptian police have denied making any arrests because of a person's HIV
condition.
In mid-January, four other HIV-positive men from the group of 12 were
sentenced to one-year prison terms on similar charges of debauchery. Three
others from the 12 were not prosecuted, Human Rights Watch said.
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