"The medical test showed that the eight defendants have not practiced homosexuality recently or in the past," Hesham Abdel Hamed said. "The court succumbed to public opinion," he added.ĪFP also cited a spokesman for the justice ministry's forensics department as saying prior to Saturday's verdict that medical examinations had produced no evidence that the men had engaged in homosexual activity. "My clients are innocent of practicing homosexuality," one on the lawyers, Emad Sobhi, told the AFP news agency. The legal team defending the eight men convicted on Saturday denied that the were gay. The crackdown has been criticized by rights groups, including New York-based #link: Rights Watch,# which in September accused the Egyptian authorities of repeatedly arresting and torturing men suspected of engaging in consensual gay sex.#
While homosexuality is not specifically outlawed in Egypt, there has been a series of highly publicized raids of suspected gays in the country in recent months. On the video, which went viral on the Internet, two men are seen exchanging rings an embracing in the presence of cheering onlookers. The court in the capital Cairo found all eight suspects guilty of the crime of "inciting debauchery" for their appearance in a video that allegedly shows a same-sex wedding party on a boat on the River Nile.