(MENAFN- Arab News) CAIRO: An Egyptian appeals court reduced the jail terms on Saturday for eight men sentenced last month on charges relating to their appearance in an online video purporting to show the country's first gay marriage ceremony.

The court cut the sentences on charges of spreading indecent images and inciting debauchery from three years each to one year judicial sources said. The verdict drew tears and shouts from family members in the courtroom according to a Reuters witness.

The defendants have denied the charges. Some 26 men were arrested earlier this month in a raid on a Cairo bathhouse. Their trial on charges including debauchery is set to begin on Jan. 4. A private television channel aired footage of the half-naked men hands bound being escorted out of the bathhouse.

The eight men whose sentences were reduced on Saturday were first charged in September when a public prosecutor's statement said that the images were 'humiliating regrettable and would anger God' concluding that they constituted a criminal act.