The police denied her lawyers’ requests to continue her hormone treatment and undergo further gender-affirming surgeries. She said that she had a metal rod in her left arm from a previous surgery, and that while detained, it got infected: “I was in excruciating pain, but they refused to provide medical treatment.” El-Kashif concluded: Hamed was held in pretrial detention in a prison in Nasr City, east of Cairo, for three months. He said police officers beat him every day, sexually assaulted, and constantly insulted him. At the trial, the court sentenced Hamed to six years in prison. An appeals court reduced his sentence to six months in prison, after which he was released, subject to six more months’ probation:

On the fifth day of his solitary confinement, the officers took him for another interrogation, this time with Hegazy, who was also detained for raising a rainbow flag at the same Mashrou’ Leila concert, and facing the same charge – allegedly “joining a banned group aimed at interfering with the constitution” and “inciting debauchery:” They said they were investigative police, then grabbed my arms, took my ID, and searched my phone for same-sex dating apps. They beat and cursed me, then pressured me to show them my personal photos. Despite all this, I don’t want to leave Egypt. Sarah Hegazy’s sudden death shook our community in Egypt. She was a rare person. Very few people have been able to change their lives and the entire region like she did. She put queer rights on the leftist movement’s agenda. Her experience reminds me that my voice is needed in my society, I have a role to play and I won’t stop fighting. Homosexuality is not explicitly criminalized in Egyptian law, but I was accused of joining banned groups and promoting debauchery.I was detained for 15 days in al-Haram Police Station, in a cell the size of a freezer. I suffered the worst verbal abuse I have ever encountered by police officers and they forbade me from going to the bathroom for two days. They subjected me to a forced anal exam. They sexually assaulted me. Authorities held 11 men in pretrial detention pending investigation, in some cases for months, then sentenced them to prison terms ranging from three months to six years. Appellate courts dismissed charges against eight of the men and reversed their convictions and upheld the convictions of two men but reduced their sentences. In one case, a man spent a year in prison, having been convicted of “debauchery” because he was unable to afford legal counsel to appeal his conviction. He was then transferred to the morality ward in another prison and placed in a cell with seven inmates. “We took turns sleeping. Four at a time would sleep, and three would stand, so we could fit,” he said.

LGBT People in Egypt should be allowed to express themselves and be free from punishment for doing so.After hours of verbal abuse, Hanan said, she stopped responding to questions. Then, officers began beating her: Prosecutors] kept postponing my trial, first 15 days, then 2 months. I felt like I would never leave,” Hanan said. Hanan was held in pretrial detention for a total of 2 months and 15 days. Alaa said they placed him in a “cage-like cell” overnight. He slept on a wooden plank, handcuffed, was not given food or water, and was escorted to the bathroom and not allowed to close the door. She was then detained in al-Qanater Women’s Prison in Cairo. Police officers questioned her for 12 hours and repeatedly asked her if she was a virgin, she said. Authorities charged her with “joining a terrorist group aimed at interfering with the constitution” and detained her in a 3 by 2-meter cell with 45 other women. “The women had to beat and threaten each other to have space to sleep,” she said.

In September 2019, Yasser said, he met another man in Giza Center City after chatting with him on Grindr, a same-sex dating application. Police officers approached them, accused them of “selling alcohol,” and arrested them:

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Salim was arbitrarily detained twice. In early 2019, Salim said, he was meeting a friend at night in Ramses, Cairo, when police officers approached him and demanded to see his ID. Police told Salim they were “cleaning the streets of faggots,” and proceeded to beat him “with all their might,” then handcuffed him and threw him in a police vehicle, he said. They took him to Azbakeya Police Station, and confiscated his phone, money, and personal belongings: The case is remains open. I cannot return to Egypt, because if I did, I would be arrested again in the airport.

I was interrogated by three officers at this prison, who insulted and cursed me. They said I was a faggot and drug addict. They threatened me with inciting prisoners to rape me if I didn’t confess to having had sex with men, but I didn’t. I just wanted to go to the prison cell and cry. Sarah Hegazy, who was detained in 2017 after she raised a rainbow flag at the concert, said police tortured her and incited fellow detainees to beat and sexually harass her. She took her own life in June 2020, in exile in Canada. The cases documented in this report, as recent as August 2020, demonstrate that her mistreatment is part of a larger and systematic pattern of abuse against LGBT people in Egypt.

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In 2017, while Murad was walking to his university in Alexandria at 10 a.m., a police officer, scrutinizing his appearance, said: “Do you want to give me your phone or come with me to the station?” Murad said that the officer then “searched my phone and found private photos of me dressed as a woman. He said: ‘You’re a faggot. Your parents didn’t know how to discipline you, so I will show you what discipline looks like.’” They put me in a cage-like cell, pending investigation. I was singing to calm myself down. During the police investigation, they asked me about my private life, my sex-reassignment surgery, my trans identity, and my relationship with [LGBT activists] Sarah Hegazy, Ahmed Alaa, and Mashrou’ Leila! They made me sign a police report without allowing me to read what they had written. A woman said that after being arbitrarily detained at a protest in Cairo in 2018, police officers subjected her to three “virginity” tests at different times in detention: “A woman officer grabbed and squeezed my breasts, grabbed my vagina and looked inside it, opened my anus and inserted her hand inside so deep that I felt she pulled something out of me. I bled for three days and could not walk for weeks. I couldn’t go to the bathroom, and I developed medical conditions that I still suffer from today.” I was verbally harassed and humiliated by the officers. One officer sexually harassed me, and one day, [the officers] pinned me down and shaved my head. They also asked if he had raised a rainbow flag at the concert, to which he said yes, and stated that he supports everyone’s rights to express themselves. The officer responded: “Democracy is a sin” and “You will be in prison for a very long time.”