Ahmed has returned to Cairo, his hometown, to investigate how the police pose as horsemen.
In Egypt, homosexuality is heavily stigmatized, and police have long been alleged to hunt LGBTQ+ people online. Ahmed Shihab-Eldin reports that BBC News has seen evidence of authorities using social and dating apps for this purpose.
All names of victims have been changed.
Having grown up in Egypt, I am aware of the pervasive homophobia that permeates all aspects of Egyptian society. But my friends there tell me that the atmosphere has recently become much more brutal, and the tactics of stalking LGBTQ+ people more sophisticated.
There is no explicit law against homosexuality in Egypt, but our investigation revealed that the crime of “debauchery” – a sex work law – is used to criminalize the LGBTQ+ community.
Transcripts presented in police arrest reports show how officers impersonate internet users in order to search for – and in some cases fabricate evidence against – LGBTQ+ people looking for online dates.
They reveal how police officers initiate text conversations with their targets.
Egypt is one of the most strategically important Western allies in the Middle East and receives billions of dollars in support from the United States and the European Union each year. Around half a million British tourists visit the country each year and the UK trains the police force, through the United Nations.
In a text conversation between an undercover cop and a user of the social networking and dating app WhosHere, the cop appears to be pressuring the app user to meet in person — that person then been arrested.
Police: Have you ever slept with men?
App User: Yes
Police: How about we meet?
App user: But I live with mom and dad
Police: Come on dear, don’t be shy, we can meet in public and then go to my apartment.
There are other examples, but they are too explicit to be published.
It is extremely difficult for LGBTQ+ people to openly meet potential partners in public in Egypt, so dating apps are a popular way to do so. But simply using these apps — regardless of your sexuality — may be grounds for arrest under Egypt’s laws on incitement to debauchery or public morals.
Egyptians aren’t the only ones targeted. In a transcript, police describe the identification of a stranger, who we’ll call Matt, on the popular gay dating app Grindr. A police informant then engaged Matt in conversation, and – according to the transcript – Matt “admitted his perversion, his willingness to indulge in wanton debauchery, and sent pictures of himself and his body” .
Matt told the BBC he was later arrested, charged with “debauchery” and eventually deported.
In some transcripts, the police appear to be trying to pressure people who seem to just be looking for dates or new friendships into agreeing to sex for money. Egyptian legal experts tell us that proving that there was an exchange of money, or an offer of money, can give authorities the ammunition they need to take a case to court.
One of these victims, whom we found through the transcripts, is a gay man whom we call Laith. In April 2018, the contemporary dancer was contacted from a friend’s phone number.
Laith (right) – the identities of all our contributors must be masked.
“Hello, how are you?” read the message. The “friend” asked to meet for a drink.
But when Laith arrived to meet him, his friend was nowhere in sight. He was greeted by police officers who arrested him and threw him into a cell in the vice squad.
A policeman stubbed out a cigarette on his arm, he told me, showing me the scar.
“It was the only time in my life that I tried to kill myself,” Laith says.
He claims the police then created a fake profile for him on the WhosHere app, and digitally altered his photos to make them explicit. He claims they then faked a conversation on the app which appeared to show him offering sex.
He claims the photos are proof he was framed because the legs in the photo don’t look like his – one of his legs is bigger than the other. The BBC only had access to pixelated photocopies of police records and therefore cannot independently verify this detail.
Three other people told us that police also coerced or falsified confessions as part of their case.
Laith was jailed for three months for “habitual debauchery”, a sentence reduced to one month on appeal. Laith says the police also tried to get him to report other gay people he knew.
“[Le policier] told him: “I can make up a whole story about you if you don’t give me names”.
The Egyptian government has spoken publicly about its use of online surveillance to target what it describes as “gay gatherings”.
In 2020, Ahmed Taher, former assistant to the interior minister for Internet crimes and human trafficking, told the Ahl Masr newspaper: “We recruited police officers in the virtual world to uncover the masses of sex parties collectives, homosexual gatherings.”
The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office told the BBC that no UK funding had been used to train Egyptian police in activities related to the allegations made in the investigation.
British MP Alicia Kearns, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, told the BBC she wants more to be done to warn LGBTQ+ travelers of the risks in countries such as Egypt, “where their sexuality could be used as a weapon against them”.
“I urge the Egyptian government to cease all activities that target individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation.”
The Egyptian government did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
The WhosHere app is mentioned in almost every police transcript the BBC has had access to.
Cyber-privacy experts told us that WhosHere appears to have specific vulnerabilities, allowing hackers to harvest information about its users, such as their location, on a large scale.
According to them, the manner in which WhosHere collects and stores data is likely to violate existing privacy laws in the UK and the European Union.
It was only after an official approach by the BBC to WhosHere that the application changed its settings, removing the “search for the same sex” selection, which could pose a risk of identification.
WhosHere disputes the BBC’s conclusions about the vulnerabilities and says it has a history of addressing issues when they come up. And that they do not run any specific services for the LGBTQ+ community in Egypt.
Grindr, also used as an app by police and criminals to find LGBTQ+ people in Egypt, said: “We are working extensively with Egyptian LGBTQ activists, international human rights defenders and security-focused technologists to best serve our users in the region.”
Criminal gangs use the same tactics as the police to find LGBTQ+ people. They attack and then humiliate them, and extort them by threatening to post the videos online.
Laila (right) – the identities of all our contributors must be masked.
For the BBC Queer documentary Egypt Under Attack, we used an innovative 3D masking system with face tracking to ensure identities were protected. The goal was to give the film a more appealing aesthetic than the usual technique of disguise allows.
I managed to track down two people we call Laila and Jamal who were victims of a video that went viral in Egypt a few years ago. The video shows them being forced to strip and dance, while being beaten and abused. At knifepoint, they are forced to give their full names and admit they are gay. They told me that the duo behind the video – Bakar and Yehia – were well known in the community.
We have seen at least four videos in which Bakar and Yehia appear or are heard extorting and assaulting LGBTQ+ people before uploading them to Whatsapp, Youtube and Facebook. In one of these videos, an 18-year-old gay man we call Saeed is coerced into saying, falsely, that he is a sex worker. I met him to find out what happened next. He told me that he had considered taking legal action but that his lawyer had advised him against it, telling him that his sexuality would be seen as a more serious crime than the assault he suffered.
Saeed is now estranged from his family. He says they cut him off when the gang sent them the video in an attempt to blackmail them too.
“I have been suffering from depression since what happened, and the videos have been circulating among all my friends in Egypt. I don’t go out, and I don’t have a phone.
“Before, nobody knew anything about me.”
We’ve been told of dozens of attacks like this – carried out by multiple gangs. There are only a few reports of arrests of attackers.
I was shocked to learn during the investigation that gang leader Yahia is gay and is actively posting about his own sex work online. But maybe that gives him a criminal advantage – he knows how vulnerable his targets are. And no doubt his own position as a gay man with few opportunities fuels his criminality.
We have no evidence that Yahia was involved in the recent attacks, and he has denied involvement in either attack.
Covering any of these issues inside Egypt itself has been banned since 2017, when the country’s Supreme Media Regulatory Council imposed a media blackout on LGBTQ+ portrayal, unless the coverage “acknowledges the fact that their behavior is inappropriate”.
LGBTQ+ community advocates, many of whom are in exile, are divided on whether issues in Egypt should be highlighted in the media or addressed behind the scenes.
But Laila, Saeed, Jamal and Laith chose to come out of the shadows and break the silence.