International Gay Intimidation: Greyson, Greenwald, Alekseev

On Friday, Egyptian officials arrested Canadian physician Tarek Loubani and queer filmmaker John Greyson who made the aids musical Zero Patience and the lyrical, semi-magical Lilies, which was nominated for thirteen Genie awards and won four including best picture -- imagine if Todd Haynes' Poison won the top Oscar. The two were trying to get to Gaza to train doctors / make a documentary about a hospital. Police are still detaining them in Torah prison, where Mubarak has been held.

Joe Jervis worries about "famed Russian gay activist Nikolai Alekseev. Some people think he may have been kidnapped, others are worried he's had a mental breakdown." Queerty has more.

Glenn Greenwald, the gay journalist who broke the Snowden story, reports his Brazilian boyfriend David Miranda was detained by British officials for nine hours under the UK terrorism law when he tried to change planes at Heathrow coming home from Berlin. Documents show fewer than .06% of detainees are kept more than six hours. Please read his blistering essay, which says in part:

"They obviously had zero suspicion that David was associated with a terrorist organization or involved in any terrorist plot. Instead, they spent their time interrogating him about the NSA reporting which Laura Poitras, the Guardian and I are doing, as well the content of the electronic products he was carrying. They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop "the terrorists", and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name.

"This is obviously a rather profound escalation of their attacks on the news-gathering process and journalism. It's bad enough to prosecute and imprison sources. It's worse still to imprison journalists who report the truth. But to start detaining the family members and loved ones of journalists is simply despotic. Even the Mafia had ethical rules against targeting the family members of people they felt threatened by. But the UK puppets and their owners in the US national security state obviously are unconstrained by even those minimal scruples."

Amnesty condemned the "unwarranted revenge tactics" and Keith Vaz, the chairman of the home affairs select committee, has formally requested an explanation.

UPDATE: The Times of London reports that in advance of the detention, UK officials shared their plan to hold David Miranda with the White House. No one objected.