Cairo24 news website, a pro-Egyptian media outlet, has published media reports saying that the initial investigations into the gang rape of a girl at the Fairmont Nile Hotel revealed that it was just a group sex party.
These media reports reinforced Egyptian activists’ fears that the Egyptian authorities were complicit in acquitting the perpetrators of this crime, as they are the children of wealthy or influential officials. Investigations published by websites close to the regime claimed that this crime revealed a large network of young people of both sexes who were homosexuals, lesbians, and spreading AIDS. The investigations, which are still running, announced that the incident was a party for a group of gays and for group sex. This information means that the girl is accused of homosexuality.
The Egyptian authorities consider homosexuality a crime and usually prosecute homosexuals with charges including spreading immorality. In the same context, human rights sources said that some witnesses to the incident were arrested and forcibly disappeared, and warned against changing the course of the case. The Fairmont Nile City Hotel incident sparked Egyptian public opinion because of the horror of its details, and it also comes in the context of campaigns encouraging women to expose the facts of sexual harassment or rape that they have been subjected to.
The sources expected that the security services would present new investigations to the public prosecution, claiming that the incident occurred with the assaulted girl’s consent. The sources accused the Egyptian National Security Agency of exerting pressure on the arrested girls to change their testimony about the crime.
On August 6, the public prosecution received a letter from the National Council for Women, accompanied by a complaint submitted by one of the girls to the council regarding a group of men sexually assaulting her in 2014, inside the Fairmont Nile City Hotel in Cairo.
