Tracked, hunted down and arrested in the name of “debauchery” and “public morality”. This is the fate awaiting the LGBT+ community in Egypt, now that – local witnesses say – the atmosphere in the country has become more brutal and suffocating than ever. Unwritten laws against homosexuality make it very difficult for LGBT+ people to meet potential partners, which is why they so often resort to dating apps and online dating. And it is precisely these sites that the police have begun to use in their favor to track down homosexual people, and in some cases fabricate false evidence against them.
The BBC has obtained transcripts of conversations between Egyptian police and gay people on apps such as WhosHere and Grindr. “Have you ever slept with a man before?”, “Let’s meet for a drink”, “Tell me where you live”: an interrogation disguised as knowledge, harmless questions in a conversation between potential partners, but which become evidence for the police if on the other side of the screen is an undercover agent.
Fabricate evidence
Police make no secret of using this “technique”: The Egyptian government has spoken publicly about its use of online surveillance to target what it described as “homosexual gatherings”. In 2020, Ahmed Taher, former assistant to the interior minister for internet crimes and human trafficking, told the newspaper Ahl Masr candidly.
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But online conversations also show how the police try to fabricate evidence when it is not “offered” to them. Indeed, in some of the transcripts, it appears that the police are trying to pressure their interlocutors into accepting sex for money. This is because proving that there has been an exchange of money in this regard, or simply an offer, gives the authorities the certainty that they can take a case to court.
And the risk of being arrested does not only concern Egyptian people, but also foreigners visiting or residing in the country. A boy said he was locked up on charges of instigating debauchery, and then expelled.
The gang method
But that’s not all, because the same police “technique” is also used by criminal gangs, who identify LGBT+ people and then attack them, humiliate them, commit violence against them, and extort money from them under the threat of posting online videos in which they are offended and mortified.
A video that went viral on all popular platforms some time ago showed two young men forced to strip and dance while being beaten, forced at knife point to give their full names and admit to being gay. He had been extorted by one of these gangs, who had approached the two young men with the online dating chat system.
This is just one of many cases, and hardly the people responsible for these attacks are later identified and punished. Especially since the method they use is the same as the police who are supposed to arrest them.