Eight men has been jailed for three years in Egypt for a video claimed to be a gay wedding, although Homosexuality is not legally banned in Egypt; the men were convicted for broadcasting images that violated public decency.
The video which was filmed aboard a Nile riverboat shows a gay wedding ceremony, with two men in the center kissing, exchanging rings and cutting cake with their images on it.
The video went viral on social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Their arrests were the latest in a string of highly publicized police raids on suspected gays in the country, prompting a US-based social networking application used by gays to urge caution to users in Egypt known as Grindr, it warned that Egyptian police, who had said they planned to monitor social networking sites, could be using it to entrap gays.
One of the defendant Prior to their arrest maintained that it was a birthday party and not a wedding saying, “My clients are innocent of practicing homosexuality,” he told AFP. “The court succumbed to public opinion.”
A spokesman for the justice ministry’s forensics had told AFP before Saturday’s hearing that an invasive anal exam of the men showed that they did not have receptive anal sex.
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