The plight of 52 men on trial for being gay was decided in Cairo yesterday when a military court sentenced 23 defendants to between one and five years on charges of debauchery and contempt of religion. Twenty-nine other defendants were acquitted.
The longest sentence was for Sherif Farahat, who was found guilty of falsely interpreting the Koran and exploiting Islam to promote deviant ideas, in addition to the other charges. A second defendant, Mahmoud Ahmed Allam, received three years on the same religious grounds, but was cleared of debauchery. The remainder were sentenced to between one and two years.
As the verdicts became known outside the courtroom, where relatives had been forced to wait by baton-wielding policemen, joy erupted among the families of those who were acquitted.
The men were arrested last May when police raided a disco on the Queen Boat, a tourist boat moored off the up-market neighbourhood of Zamalek.
The disco was a known gay hang-out but non-gays would also go there to dance. Women and foreign men present at the time of the raid were told to leave.
The Egyptian press seized on the story and its sensational coverage shocked the country. The names and pictures of the accused, and even their home addresses were published, along with lurid details that had little to do with the facts of the case.
There was little sympathy for the plight of the accused among the highly-conservative general public, nor for their allegations of torture and forced medical examinations at the hands of the police.
The case became notorious outside Egypt, however, and led to protests by gay activists around the world. The trial has also been condemned by international human rights organisations, not only because the men were on trial for their sexual orientation but because they were tried in military courts under Egypt's emergency laws. There is no right to appeal in such courts, except by a decision by President Mubarak, a practice that Amnesty International describes as "a flagrant violation of the UN Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary".