Katherine Franke: A Gay Rights Angle on the Egyptian Revolution?

23.2.11

Katherine Franke: A Gay Rights Angle on the Egyptian Revolution?: "They were tried before an Egyptian Emergency State security court -- a creation of President Mubarak in 1981 after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. In November, 2001, the defendants were brought into court and were promptly placed in a cage in the courtroom where they stood wearing masks and hoods they had constructed out of their shirts and underwear in order to disguise their identities from the media present in the court. Indeed, only the media was allowed in the courtroom when the judge read out the verdicts and sentences. Families and friends of the accused were not permitted to be present, and their cries from the hall and banging on the courtroom doors rumbled in the courtroom as the judge began the proceedings. The judge read the court's verdict in a whisper that no one in the room could hear, indeed for some days many defendants did not know whether they had been found guilty or what sentence they had been given."