FIVE CONVICTED IN EGYPT

The five Egyptian men on trial for “habitual practice of debauchery” have been given prison sentences in Cairo.

They have been sentenced to three years in prison, in a crackdown on gay men and HIV positive people by Egyptian authorities.

Cairo police have jailed 12 men since October 2007 in a spreading hunt for people suspected of being HIV-positive. In January, a Cairo court convicted four of the men of “debauchery” charges and sentenced them to a year in prison.

The arrests began when one man, stopped on the street during an altercation, told officers he was HIV positive.

Police arrested him and the man with him, beat and abused them, and began picking up others whose names or contact information they found through interrogating the first detainees.

All the men were charged with the “habitual practice of debauchery,” a term which in Egyptian law includes consensual sexual acts between men.

Doctors from Egypt’s Forensic Medical Authority performed forcible and abusive anal examinations on the men to “prove” they had had sex with other men.

Over 100 international organisations working in the fields of health and human rights have condemned the actions and the participation of medical personnel in the crackdown.