Geneva — Proposed Changes Threaten Fair Trial Rights, Empower Abusive Officials
The Egyptian parliament must reject a proposed draft law that would replace the 1950 Criminal Procedure Code (CPC), Amnesty International, Dignity, Human Rights Watch, and the International Commission of Jurists said today. If enacted, the draft legislation would undermine Egypt's already weakened fair trial rights protections and further empower abusive law enforcement officials.
"Instead of seizing the opportunity to introduce much-needed protections and safeguards for detainees' and defendants' human rights, and end arbitrary detention, Egyptian legislators are intent on perpetuating the same frameworks that facilitated past and ongoing violations," said Saïd Benarbia, Middle East and North Africa program director at the International Commission of Jurists. "The draft amendments make a mockery of the so-called National Dialogue between the government and opposition and of the concerns of victims, civil society representatives, and United Nations bodies and independent experts."
The Egyptian government proposed the draft CPC, which the Egyptian parliament's Constitutional and Legislative Affairs committee reviewed in August and approved in September 2024. The latest draft of the legislation, which some pro-government news websites have published, would replace the 1950 CPC, while retaining some of its provisions.
Pro-government media sources have claimed that the draft CPC was drafted in response to recommendations from Egypt's so-called 2023 National Dialogue, in the context of which the authorities held lengthy discussions with opposition figures and civil society on political prisoners and the abusive use of pretrial detention, among other subjects. Nevertheless, the draft CPC falls far short of international human rights law and standards by: (i) failing to put an end to the Egyptian authorities' widespread resort to abusive pretrial detention to punish critics; (ii) perpetuating impunity for law enforcement officials; and (iii) entrenching the public prosecutors' authority and discretion in a manner that could facilitate further violations of fair trial rights.
The draft CPC is slated to be discussed in the parliament's plenary sessions and could be approved as early as October 2024. Under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Egyptian parliament, which is dominated by pro-government members, has frequently rubber-stamped government-proposed laws.
The flawed draft CPC has drawn widespread criticism, including from the Journalists' Syndicate and the Lawyers' Syndicate. Both separately said that the proposed amendments contain many "unconstitutional" provisions and undermine the right to a defence, the role of lawyers, and the principle of a fair public trial.
"The draft CPC does not meet international human rights standards and will have a catastrophic impact on the rights of defendants before and during trial," said Mahmoud Shalaby, Egypt researcher at Amnesty International. "It fails to ensure a detainee's right to be brought before a judge promptly, at most within 48 hours from the time of arrest, to rule on their detention. The amendments would also authorize prosecutors to make crucial decisions on hearing defence witnesses and enable prosecutors to conduct interrogations without defence lawyers present if deemed 'necessary to reveal the truth'."
The Egyptian authorities have amended the CPC on numerous occasions in recent decades - including under the current government - to undermine judicial independence and the rule of law, and to further erode international fair trial standards and increase their repression of political dissent. Since 2013, the Egyptian authorities have politicized the judiciary and dismantled judicial independence guarantees, the rule of law, and fair trial guarantees to use the judiciary in a nationwide campaign to crackdown on peaceful dissent. By entrenching the power of prosecutors further, the draft CPC ignores their complicity in widespread arbitrary detention, torture, and other ill-treatment, and enforced disappearances.
Certain proposed provisions, if enacted as currently formulated, would shorten pretrial detention periods. Yet, the revised limits would remain unduly long, and the draft CPC fails to curb prosecutors' existing powers to extend abusive pretrial detention without judicial oversight, including by ordering those detained into pretrial detention on similar charges in new cases, in a practice commonly referred to as "rotation" or "recycling". The draft CPC fails to uphold Egypt's international obligations to ensure that pretrial detention is used only as an exception, rather than the rule, and used only when doing so is necessary and proportionate to achieve permissible objectives, such as protecting evidence or public safety.
The proposed CPC also includes provisions codifying and broadening the use of a videoconference system for prosecutorial and court hearings, which have undermined fair trial guarantees and hindered judicial officers from assessing defendants' wellbeing, leaving them more vulnerable to abuse in custody, including as a result of abusive prison conditions. In addition, the draft CPC maintains provisions that perpetuate impunity for abuses perpetrated by security officials by restricting victims' rights to hold officers accountable for the international crimes of torture and enforced disappearance, which are widespread in Egypt.
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"The proposed CPC fails to address authorities' abuse of pretrial detention, perpetuating its arbitrary use as a punitive tool," said Grant Shubin, legal adviser at Dignity. "The shameless audacity of Egyptian authorities in celebrating this draft shows how far this oppressive government has distanced itself from the most basic international human rights standards and reflects the security agencies' ability to write their abusive practices into law with little resistance from state institutions."
Amnesty International, Dignity, Human Rights Watch, and the International Commission of Jurists call on the Egyptian authorities to drop the proposed draft CPC and prepare a new draft law in line with international human rights standards and in genuine, transparent consultation with Egyptian and international nongovernmental groups, independent experts, victims, and lawyers.
