EGYPT 'TORTURING HIV SUFFERERS'

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/7231082.stm
Published: 2008/02/06 18:10:04 GMT

HIV-positive Egyptian men are tortured and chained to hospital beds
while awaiting unfair homosexuality trials, a human rights group
has claimed.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) decried the "ignorance and injustice" of a
case in which a group of arrested men were given HIV tests without
their consent.

They were also subjected to anal tests to "prove" their homosexual
conduct.

Two of the men tested HIV-positive and are now handcuffed to hospital
beds for 23 hours a day, HRW said.

"These men have been subjected to anal examination without their
consent which amounts to torture," Gasser Abdel-Razek, HRW's acting
director of regional relations in the Middle East, told the BBC
on Wednesday.

"Egypt should release the men unconditionally and put a system in
place that does not deal with HIV-positive individuals as criminals
but as patients who require medical care and attention."

Egypt's Interior Ministry had no immediate comment on the case.

'Ignorance and injustice'

Two of the men were arrested in October after a scuffle in central
Cairo and when one said he was HIV-positive they were taken to the
police branch which deals with issues of public morality.

Both men claim they were beaten for refusing to sign statements
written by the police.

These cases show Egyptian police acting on the dangerous belief that
HIV is... a crime to be punished
Scott Long, Human Rights Watch

Two more men were arrested when police found their photographs and
contact numbers in the wallets of those detained.

All four men, who have not been identified, remain in custody pending
a prosecutor's decision on possible charges.

Scott Long, director of the US-based group's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
and Transgender Rights Programme, said the arrests "embody both
ignorance and injustice".

"These cases show Egyptian police acting on the dangerous belief that
HIV is not a condition to be treated but a crime to be punished,"
he said.

'Habitual debauchery' convictions

Four further arrests were made in November when police raided the flat
of one of those being held, which had been placed under surveillance.

Those four men were sentenced to one year in jail in January having
been convicted of "habitual debauchery", which Human Rights Watch
says is a euphemism used to penalise consensual homosexual acts.

Their lawyers claimed the prosecution had produced no evidence against
the defendants, who pleaded not guilty.

While not explicitly referred to in Egypt's legal code, homosexuality
can be punished under several different laws covering obscenity,
prostitution and debauchery.

Egypt has come under repeated criticism by both human rights groups
and the international community for its treatment of homosexual people