EGYPT: Eight Men Sentenced To Three Years In Prison Over Wedding Video

Via CNN:

By the big smiles, warm hugs and loud cries of ululation, the video seems to show a joyous celebration. An Egyptian prosecutor looked at the same footage and saw something very different: a “satanic ceremony” with images that are “shameful, regrettable and anger God.” However it is characterized, the event has landed eight men in jail for three years, an Egyptian court ruled Saturday. The men will face three years of probation upon their release, according to Egypt’s state-run Ahram Online. It’s all because of a roughly 1-minute video set upon a Nile riverboat. It shows several well-dressed men, one of which pulls out a ring and slips it on another man’s finger. The two had a brief kiss, then hug — all as others on the boat cry out happily around them. There’s a cake with two men’s picture on it. “May your night be filled with pomp and ceremony,” one man says.

The sentence for “debauchery” comes despite a government-ordered physical examination of the men which concluded that they “had never had sex with other men.”