Author: Declan Walsh / Source: New York Times

Rania Youssef has apologized for wearing a revealing dress at the Cairo International Film Festival. Suhail Saleh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
CAIRO — When an Egyptian actress strutted down the red carpet in Cairo last week, twirling and smiling in a revealing lace dress, she had hoped to turn heads in the movie world.
Instead, she now faces criminal charges that could potentially land her in prison.
Three Egyptian lawyers known for using the courts to engage in moral vigilantism filed a lawsuit against the actress, Rania Youssef, accusing her of wearing an outfit at the Cairo International Film Festival that constituted “incitement to debauchery.”
A trial has been scheduled for January, and Ms. Youssef, who is in her 40s, could face a possible five-year jail term if convicted.
The case is the latest in a series of high-profile prosecutions targeting celebrities in Egypt under the authoritarian rule of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. They are often brought by lawyers claiming to police public morals by regulating attire, behavior and even jokes under the guise of protecting a brittle version of Egyptian nationalism.
Such prosecutions often ultimately fail. The pop singer Sherine Abdel-Wahab, initially sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for an onstage joke about the quality of water in the notoriously dirty Nile, was acquitted on appeal in May.
But sometimes the charges stick, resulting in prisons sentences for entertainers convicted of breaching public morals. The prosecutions have had a chilling effect on free speech at a time when Egypt’s news media is largely under the sway of Mr. Sisi, and his government has engaged in a harsh crackdown on the gay community.
Egypt’s overcrowded prisons currently include a singer who was imprisoned for making lewd gestures in a pop video, and a female human rights activist who had broadcast a profanity-laced video on Facebook about being sexually harassed in public.
Women’s…
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