Disinformation surrounds reports that the Egyptian police arrested 60 men attending a gay wedding, according to a prominent gay Irish politician.

Senator David Norris has written to the Irish Times commenting on an article published on 14 May, which was based on a Reuters report. Early versions of the story reported arrests made at a sex party.

Norris quoted information given to him by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, of which he is an ex-board member.

He said that Egyptian police arrested 55 men on 10 May “in a raid on a discotheque in Cairo which is frequented by gays.

“Since then the men have been held incommunicado without access to legal representation or to their families. State security officers have described the men as members of a Satanist organisation and threatened to try them before a special security court whose judgements admit no appeal. It is widely rumoured that they have been beaten and tortured since their arrest.

“Western press reports of a ‘gay wedding’ are based on defamatory reporting in the Egyptian media and are completely untrue. There has been consistent leaking of prejudicial material from the prosecutor’s office describing the accused as ‘Europeanised cosmopolitans and Israeli sympathisers who were practising deviant rituals and holding parties where they practised group sex and abnormal activities’.”

Norris said: “It is obvious that this is a disgraceful attempt to prejudice any trial by prior press coverage.”

He continued: “The material coming from official sources is horrifyingly filled with racism and homophobia. The denial of legal representation and the refusal to allow family members to visit are clear. The newspaper Wafd reported on 14 May that State security officers had subjected the prisoners to an anal forensic medical examination, which seems to me at least to constitute rape.”

Norris remarked: “I have written to the Egyptian Ambassador expressing my concern and abhorrence at this inhuman treatment.”

The arrests follow recent crackdowns by Egyptian officials on a gay website.

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