"Damanhour Five" sentenced today The White House remains silent on the human rights abuses of alleged homosexuals in Egypt. Own correspondent An Egyptian court yesterday sentenced The "Damanhour Five", accused of consensual homosexual conduct, to three years' imprisonment to be followed by three years' probation. The trial, held in Damanhour, the judge deliberated for only fifteen minutes before handing down the verdicts. All five men had confessed to homosexual acts under what they later claimed was torture. The prosecutor alleged that they had been found "used" - passive partners in homosexual sex -by a medical examination. "This trial - if it can even be called that - is simply another farce," says Scott Long, Program Director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC). "The defendants have been subjected to brutal torture through beatings and electroshock in the two months since their detention. We call for their immediate release." Egyptian President Mubarak's recent state visit to the United States prompted human rights groups to protest at the White House's silence at the human rights abuses in that country. Sydney Levy, IGLHRC Communications Director commented that "President Bush must remember that against torture there should be no immunity, and there can be no neutrality." US officials apparently never raised the recent pattern of persecution in Egypt. The Damanhour defendants will be at an appeals hearing on April 13 and the "Boulak 4" on March 18. The Damanhour trial comes after a year in which brutal arrests, allegations of torture, and hard labour sentences and sensationalised trials of suspected homosexuals have become a regular occurrence in Egypt. The Damanhour defendants have been in detention since their arrest on January 15, 2002. They been charged with "habitual practice of debauchery" [al-fujur] under Article 9(c) of Law 10/1961 - a provision commonly used in Egypt to penalise consensual homosexual behavior. The same law was used to sentence 23 men to one to five years of hard labor on November 14 of last year, in the notorious Queen Boat case. Latest news 22 May 2012: Cairo psychiatrist claims he can "cure" 70 to 75 per cent of gay teenagers.