According to eyewitnesses, ten undercover officers from both state security and the vice squad entered the boat’s discotheque, known as a gay hang-out on Thursday nights, around 2am. After ten minutes of watching the dancing crowd, they started arresting the Egyptian men present and loading them onto three vans parked outside. The boat’s manager, Mamdouh Eleiwa, told the Cairo Times that a surgeon and professor at Cairo University’s Faculty of Medicine was slapped on the face several times by a police officer and called a derogatory slang word for homosexual when he refused to go. Neither the boat’s staff nor its owner, business woman and retired fashion model Madiha Hassan Dergham, were summoned for questioning.

Although several foreign men were present when the raid took place, none were arrested. Neither were any of the four Egyptian women who were present. "The fact that Egyptian men were exclusively arrested is just disgusting," said a British eyewitness who asked for anonymity. "Westerners should not be immune from the law," he added. At the time of the raid, he was dancing with his Egyptian friend and flatmate, who is currently in jail.

A source in the prosecutor’s office told reporters on 12 May that the defendants were "practicing deviant rituals and holding parties were they practiced group sex and abnormal activities." While there is no mention of homosexuality in the Egyptian penal code, some statutes criminalizing obscenity and public indecency have been used against gay men in the past. The Queen Boat has been raided before, but detainees have been released after 3 to 10 days of detention in police stations. This is the first time that the arrested men have been transferred to the prosecutor’s office to face charges. If officially charged, the defendants will stand before a state security court, whose rulings are final and incontestable.

The morning after the prosecutor’s statement, different versions of the story were all over the local press. The state-owned Al Ahram published in its crime page that the defendants were members of a new devil worshipping cult that included students, doctors and other professionals. "The defendants considered themselves to be of the people of the Prophet Lot and took [the 8th-century Abbasid poet] Abu Nuwas as their prophet...They tried to recruit new members to their cult and called on them to go to swim in the Dead Sea in Jordan to be blessed by its water," the paper added. Al Ahram’s coverage of state security cases is widely considered to reflect the prosecution’s views.

Other papers added that the cult held weekly male wedding parties on the boat and were in the middle of one when they were arrested. The boat’s staff denied these claims and complained about inaccurate media coverage. "Journalists come to me and listen to what happened and then make up completely different stories," Eleiwa said bitterly.

The heavy press coverage of the case is reminiscent of a case in 1997, when 78 teenage men were arrested and accused of establishing a satanic cult. They were released after two months of detention, and the case was never brought to the court, but the some segments of the press later criticized the papers who had printed the names and pictures of the defendants, thus tarnishing their image in society. This week, official, opposition and independent newspapers published the names of the 55 defendants and some front pages carried their pictures with their eyes crossed over in black.

"We have learned from the state’s behavior to be skeptical about official statements. But if it is true that these charges were fabricated to prosecute homosexuals due to the absence of laws that criminalize homosexuality, then the state is way out of line," said Gasser Abdel Razeq of the Hisham Mubarak Center for Law. A lawyer from the center tried to meet one of the defendants at the prosecution, but was prohibited. Although Abdel Razeq told the Cairo Times that the center will follow up the case, he added that their interest in this particular case is only documentation, with no intention to provide legal service for any of the defendants. The reaction of other local human rights group was similar. "We generally defend liberties but there are red lines that we should stop at," said Samir Al Bagouri of the Association for Human Rights Legal Aid. Secretary-General of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights Hafez Abu Saada said that defending gay rights was not part of his group’s mandate. "Personally, I don’t like the subject of homosexuality, and I don’t want to defend them," Abu Saada said.

"When we started campaigning against female genital mutilation people said we wanted all of Egyptian society to work in prostitution," said Mohammed Zari’ of the Human Rights Center for the Assistance of Prisoners (HRCAP). "We live in a conservative society that condemns homosexuality and we have to keep that in mind." Homosexuality is a big taboo in Egypt, and local human rights groups are often criticized for following a Western agenda.

However, Zari’ said his center is willing to provide legal aid for defendants who were subject to torture or assault during detention. Although the HRCAP has reported on previous violations of prisoner’s rights in Tora prison, where the defendants are detained, Zari’ said that it is mainly political prisoners who are subject to such violations. "Defendants in cases which receive heavy media coverage are less likely to be subject to torture," he added. Al Wafd of 14 May said the defendants will be subject to forensic exams to ascertain if they have ever engaged in homosexual sex.

The London-based Human Rights Watch had not issued a statement as of press time, but the London office director of the Middle East and North Africa Division, Hania Mufti, told the Cairo Times that her office would take up the issue with the interior ministry and the state security prosecutor as soon as possible.

Although the Queen Boat was not closed down, their is a heavy police presence at its entrance and a corresponding lack of guests.

Photograph by DANA SMILLIE