By AFSANEH RIGOT Afsaneh Rigot is a senior researcher at Article 19 and an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University, researching law, technology, human rights, and corporate responsibility.
Earlier this year, Adel went on Grindr to surf and meet other queer people in town. (Adel is a pseudonym I’m using for his protection.) Adel eventually set a date with someone he had been talking to. The date arrived at his house—but it wasn’t whom he had been talking to. This wasn’t a date; it was entrapment. Adel was met by officers who arrested him for debauchery and digital crimes, using his chats on the app as reason for the arrest.
He was charged with “debauchery crimes” as well as cybercrimes and telecommunication crimes for the chats he’d had on Grindr and other apps with a “police consultant,” and for other pieces of evidence discovered on his person and devices. His case is being heard in the Egyptian economic courts and is indicative of a worrying change in how the Egyptian government targets the queer community.
Over the past few years, Egyptian prosecutors have started increasingly relying on the gathering of digital evidence to prosecute LGBTQ people through online dating app entrapments or evidence from people’s devices. However, as of this year, prosecutors are moving LGBTQ cases to the economic courts of Egypt, which are known for prosecuting online “moral” crimes. The result is that sentences, charges, and fines are being doubled.
Egypt has a long history of prosecuting the LGBTQ community. Though Egyptian law does not directly prohibit “homosexuality,” a complex legal infrastructure of interpretations and precedents has allowed for continuous and targeted prosecution of LGBTQ individuals.
Egyptian authorities use a number of laws to prosecute LGBTQ individuals for activities online and offline. Up until about March 2020, the main article of law used has been Article 9(c) of the 1961 law on Combating of Prostitution, which calls for the sentencing of “Whoever habitually engages in debauchery or prostitution.” As a habitual act is hard to prove, courts have often relied on digital evidence from dating apps, chats, and photos or videos found on individuals’ devices. In these cases, the charges were generally of the crime of incitement or publicity of debauchery, according to Article 14(a). These cases were tried in the misdemeanor courts, and convictions carried sentences of around three months to three years with a maximum fine of 300 Egyptian pounds (about U.S.$19).
In my research into the use of digital evidence against LGBTQ communities, I have witnessed the trajectory of this shift. The change to this pattern came this year just as the world went into COVID-19 lockdowns. Starting in March, LGBTQ-prosecuting cases started being tried in the economic courts. The courts are optimizing how to turn private interactions and communication, deemed queer, into a certified sentence. Read more via Slate