BUZZFEED NEWS
J. Lester Feder and Maged Atef
Original Article: bzfd.it/17ePgWa
CAIRO — When asked to explain what Cairo’s medical inspectors look for when they examine someone who’s been arrested for homosexuality, Dr. Maged Louis picked up a pen and started sketching an oval with sharp points on both ends.
“The shape of the hole will change,” he said. The anus “won’t be normal any more and will look like the female vagina.”
More than 150 people have been arrested on charges of homosexuality since President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took power just under two years ago, the largest roundup of alleged LGBT people in more than a decade in Egypt. Anal exams are a routine part of the investigation in such cases, and Louis has a role in overseeing all of them. He is the deputy director of the Justice Ministry’s Forensic Medical Authority, as well as the chief of forensic medicine for the Cairo police district.
“First we make them take the prostrate position — the position that Muslims take when they pray,” he said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. The tests are intended not just to determine whether someone has ever had anal sex, but also to detect “chronic homosexuals,” because the letter of Egyptian law only criminalizes men who engage in “habitual debauchery.” Louis said that he believed that in addition to their elongation, the anuses of “chronic homosexuals” also don’t clench when touched or don’t contract as tightly. They are smooth and lack the “corrugations” — wrinkles — found on “normal” anuses, he said. And though he denied that examiners penetrate subjects under examination, he also said they can detect a “chronic homosexual” if his anus can accept larger objects.
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