Men wept and screamed inside a crammed courtroom cage Wednesday as a judge sentenced 23 of them to jail terms of 1 to 5 years for gay sex in a trial denounced by human-rights groups as persecution of homosexuals.
An additional 29 men were acquitted, prompting cries of joy from relatives who had denied the charges and accused the Egyptian media during the four-month trial of sensationalism and destroying the young men’s reputations.
Only a few people were allowed into the courtroom to hear the verdicts. Outside, police wielding sticks drove back about 200 relatives, lawyers, journalists and passersby.
Crammed into a courtroom cage, the 52 defendants in white prison uniforms wept and screamed as the presiding judge read out the sentences.
Judge Mohammed Abdel Karim read his verdicts and sentences quickly, ignoring the defendants’ shouts and chants from some relatives.
One mother, whose son was sentenced to 2 years, wept and said: “By God, my son has nothing to do with this. He is straight.”
The men were put on trial after police raided a Nile River boat restaurant in May and accused them of having a gay sex party.
Homosexuality is not explicitly referred to in the Egyptian legal system, but a wide range of laws covering obscenity, prostitution and public morality are punishable by jail terms.
