CAIRO — The scene described by lawyers at a Cairo court on Jan. 4-5 evoked classic paintings of Roman orgies. Quoting a police report, they described how 21 out of 26 defendants standing trial on charges of indecency and habitual debauchery had been caught in various sexual positions during a Dec. 7 raid on a public bathhouse.

Photos of these towel-clad, bare-chested men covering their faces as they were led outside the Bab El-Bahr bathhouse made the depiction plausible. TV reporter Mona Iraqi posted these photos on Facebook under the self-congratulatory title of raiding “the largest den of group perversion.”

The Arabic term for perversion, “shezoz,” is used to refer to and denounce homosexuality.

Iraqi explained over two 30-minute episodes on Dec. 8 and 18 of her TV program "El-Mestakhabi" (The Hidden) that the raid was part of an investigation on HIV. The bathhouse, she argued, was both a brothel and an HIV hub. The raid seemed isolated from other interviews with alleged male prostitutes, therapists and activists, but because of Iraqi’s Facebook post, it became the center of the controversy.