Crime

Egypt: Men accused of ‘spreading AIDS’ in bathhouse to go to trial

Dec 17 2014
Written by Joseph McCormick

Dozens of men who were recently arrested in a raid on a bathhouse in Cairo, Egypt went to trial this week accused of “debauchery”.

The men arrested were accused of “perversions” as news reporters told police that the bathhouses were used for “group perversions”. One reporter posted pictures of the dozens of men, mainly naked, being rounded up during the raid and put into vans.

The bathhouse owner was accused by prosecutors of facilitating the “practice, facilitate and incite debauchery.”

The men will face trial on 21 December.

Mona Iraqi, a reporter with El Mostakbai, from the Al-Qahira wal Nas channel, wrote on her Facebook page: “With pictures, we reveal the biggest den of perversions in the heart of Cairo.”

Iraqi also posted that she and her team had told police on 3 December “about what is happening in the baths”, but that the broadcast of their programme was delayed in order “to give security institutions a chance to close down the baths”.

She notes that police arrived at the venue and found a group of men “caught in the act during a group sex party.”

According to Iraqi’s account, the men were “immediately transported to the prosecution with no clothes,” and of Wednesday’s broadcast she wrote that the station will air “the whole story of the dens for spreading AIDS in Egypt.”

Eight men who were jailed in Egypt over a video which purportedly showed a mock same-sex wedding recently heard that their appeal verdict will come at the end of this month.

The men were arrested in September, after a video leaked online appearing to show an unofficial same-sex wedding ceremony on a riverboat in the Nile.