“I was detained for no reason, severely beaten, tortured with electric shocks, and raped by other male prisoners,” said Ashraf, one of 20 people convicted of the ‘habitual practice of debauchery’ in a 2001 case known as the Queen Boat trial.

A report released earlier this month by the New York-based Human Rights Watch organization documents hundreds of such abuses.

According to the 144-page report entitled “In a Time of Torture: The Assault on Justice in Egypt’s Crackdown on Homosexual Conduct,” at least 179 men have appeared before prosecutors accused of debauchery since the start of the Queen Boat trial.

“That is only a minuscule percentage of the true total. Hundreds of others have been harassed, arrested, often tortured, but not charged,” according to the report.

Homosexuality is not against the law in Egypt – a point emphasized by Fathi Sorour, speaker of the People’s Assembly.

“Egypt’s penal code does not include punitive measures against homosexuals, as the country’s laws by no means interfere in the private affairs of individuals,” he said.

Nonetheless, homosexual men involved in consensual relationships – as well as heterosexuals falsely accused of homosexuality – have been prosecuted under a 1961 law on prostitution, on the charge of ‘debauchery.’

Human rights groups, including HRW, have accused the government of backing a campaign targeting homosexuals in Egypt.

“The government has found it advantageous to demonize this group of people as a way of diverting attention from other problems,” says HRW executive director Kenneth Roth.

Ashraf – not his real name – is one of many subjected to degrading and unfair treatment at the hands of the police, who are widely accused of launching a crackdown on homosexuals.

A 34-year-old father of two, Ashraf was among those arrested at the Queen Boat. He told the Middle East Times that he was happily married, and a heterosexual.

“It just happened that I was at the Queen Boat at the wrong time with the wrong people – some of them homosexual,” he said.

“The police just wanted to create panic and fill their van with people. Innocent people were arrested,” Ashraf said.

However, HRW insists that while the Queen Boat case attracted considerable media attention, the harassment of homosexuals in Egypt is far more widespread.

“We describe a continuing practice of arresting and torturing gay men by the Cairo vice squad,” said Roth.

“These practices violate the Egyptian constitution, which protects privacy and prohibits torture.”

Five local organizations attended the launch of the HRW report – the Egyptian Association Against Torture, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the Al Nadim Center for the Psychological Management and Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, and the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information – marking the first concerted, organized effort to condemn the persecution of homosexuals in Egypt.

The report documents the systematic torture and harassment of men accused of homosexuality, including arbitrary arrest.

“Prison guards also have a major role in this horror play,” said one man who was detained for two weeks.

“They encourage other prisoners to harass and rape the detainees. And if they feel that prisoners are not so enthusiastic about it, they do the job themselves,” he told the Middle East Times .

However, the presiding judge in the Queen Boat trial, Muhammad Abdel Karim, denied detainees had been tortured, saying the detained men were guilty as charged.

“Islam prohibits homosexuality and forensic doctors have proved they were guilty,” he said.

That is a view held by a considerable proportion of Egyptians. Local newspapers defended the government’s attitude, accusing HRW of promoting homosexuality in an Islamic country.

For its part, HRW insisted it did not advocate any particular sexuality. Similarly, it said, “the government has no business condemning adult sexual conduct.”

“We just want to stress that the government has to stay away from people’s private lives,” Hossam Bahgat, program director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, told the Middle East Times . “People’s privacy has to be protected.” Much of the HRW report centers on the use of torture in Egypt.

Joe Stork, executive director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa division, said another issue was the fact that Egypt’s Criminal Code provided inadequate definitions of, or protections against, torture – a point taken up by Nasser Amin, director of the Arab Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and Legal Profession.

“Torture is only a crime under Egyptian law when it is used to extract a confession,” said Amin.

“If a police officer tortures a person for other purposes, such as to extort information, for instance, it is not considered a crime,” he said.