"Stripped naked and paraded on camera"

CAIRO -- Twenty-six men arrested during a televised raid on a Cairo public bathhouse last month and accused of "debauchery" were in court Monday in what human rights activists describe as the latest example of an increasingly oppressive crackdown on Egypt's gay community.

The defense team told CBS News after the proceedings that the court would reconvene on January 12, when it is expected to issue a verdict in the controversial case.

Though homosexuality is not technically illegal in Egypt, the socially-conservative country has a history of persecuting homosexuals. When it does, the charge most often leveled against gay men by the courts is that of "inciting debauchery."

"The gay community has been targeted for a while now," defense lawyer Islam Khalifa, who is representing 14 of the accused, told CBS News on Monday.

Khalifa would know; he also defended the accused in what was known as the "Egyptian gay marriage" case in November 2014, when eight men were sentenced to three years in prison after appearing in a viral YouTube video that purportedly showed a same-sex marriage ceremony taking place on a boat in the Nile. Their sentences have subsequently been reduced to one year.

What makes the bathhouse trial especially notable is the fact that the December 7 police raid on the downtown Cairo establishment played out as television cameras rolled.

Pictures of police walking half-naked men out of the bathhouse went viral.

"It's not just invasion of privacy, but the brutality of it," said Scott Long, a human rights activist living in Cairo. "The men were stripped naked and paraded on camera."

Observers following the trial say the raid was instigated by Mona Iraqi, an Egyptian journalist and filmmaker who hosts a program called "The Hidden" on pro-government satellite channel Al-Qahira wa al-Nas.

The channel's camera's were on hand to videotape the raid for an episode exposing what Iraqi dubbed "the biggest den of perversions in the heart of Cairo" in a promotional note she posted (and has since deleted) on her Facebook account.

One picture of the raid appears to show Iraqi herself photographing the men on her phone as police round them up.

According to human rights activist Long, Iraqi and the police worked hand in hand to create publicity for the case.

The security forces functioned as "a private police force to stage a raid for the cameras to create ratings for [her] show," he told CBS News. "She represents this kind of unethical, immoral kind of collaboration between the supposedly independent media and the state."

CBS News' attempts to reach Iraqi directly have been unsuccessful.

Iraqi and her program have received condemnation for their role in the raid from both inside and outside Egypt.

"The deliberate, public humiliation of these men conducted in tandem with the media is shocking, but typical of an intensifying and troubling government clampdown on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in Egypt," New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Though the episode aired in December, the ordeal for the 26 defendants who appeared in a cage Monday in an Egyptian courtroom is far from over. Some of the men have been subjected to an intrusive and controversial medical examination that purports to forensically determine whether an individual has engaged in homosexual activity -- a practice Long described as "bogus medical mythology."

According to the defense team, 21 of the defendants are being charged with committing a sexual act in public, which carries a sentence of up to one year in prison, while six are simultaneously facing a charge of "habitual debauchery." That charge carries a possible further three years in prison.

The five other defendants -- owners and employees of the establishment -- face charges of facilitating, inciting and running an establishment for debauchery. If convicted, each one of those charges could bring three years in prison.

Defense lawyer Khalifa told CBS News that his clients denied all charges against them and that if proper legal procedures are followed, the irregularities of the investigation and lack of evidence should see them vindicated.

"Fact-wise, there is absolutely no evidence in this case," he said. "But when it comes to the conservative society that we're living in, there are no expectations."