House of Representatives Speaker Hanafi Gebali has announced that the newly amended Criminal Procedures Law will top the legislative agenda when MPs return from their three-month summer break next week.

The 540-article draft law was approved by the House’s Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee two weeks ago.

Gebali described the bill as an important step towards modernising Egypt’s legal system and reinforcing human rights. It will give prosecution authorities greater powers to investigate criminal cases and initiate legal proceedings and introduces guarantees to support human rights, including setting shorter pretrial detention periods and financially compensating those who have been wrongly detained.

Saying that he is aware that the Press Syndicate, the Bar Association, and the Judges Club have voiced concerns over the bill, Gebali added: “I want to assure everybody that the House is open to further changes as long as they aim to strengthen freedoms and rights and are in line with the constitution.”

Noting that “all the amendments proposed by the Bar Association were constructive and based on objective study,” Gebaly said the Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee had accepted the association’s amendment to Article 242, which regulates what might be deemed disruptive behaviour on the part of lawyers, despite objections from the Judges Club which claimed the changes interfered with the authority of judges to manage court sessions, limited judges’ ability to maintain order and insulted the dignity of the court.

Gebali expressed hope that during final discussions of the bill, the House will settle on wording for the article that satisfies both the Bar Association and the Judges Club.

Meanwhile, House of Representatives Secretary-General Ahmed Manaa told journalists that Gebali had sent a letter to the Press Syndicate in response to its criticisms of the draft law. The letter states that the House appreciates the role of the Press Syndicate in defending freedoms of speech and that the speaker had instructed the Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee to examine the syndicate’s proposed amendments to ensure they conform with the constitution and the rules prescribed by the Supreme Constitutional Court and the Court of Cassation.

Press Syndicate Khaled Al-Balshi had earlier claimed in a TV interview that the House’s subcommittee, which began drafting the articles of the new Criminal Procedures Law at the end of the outgoing parliamentary session, had met in secret and “failed to say how they drafted the articles”. Al-Balshi then added that “the bill still needs a comprehensive national dialogue, and the House should be in no rush to debate it.”

According to Al-Balshi, the Press Syndicate’s objections centre on articles regulating pretrial detention and journalists’ right to cover court sessions.

The Board of Trustees of the National Dialogue also complained that many of its recommendations on pretrial detention had been excluded from the draft approved by the committee.

Senator and journalist Emadeddin Hussein told Extra News channel on Monday that the committee had adopted less than half of the National Dialogue’s recommendations on pretrial detention and that, “as a result, the National Dialogue’s administration decided to reformulate its recommendations on pretrial detention and resubmit them to President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi.”

Hussein said the National Dialogue had presented three amendments to Article 143 regulating pretrial detention. The first, said Hussein, specified that defendants could be placed under electronic surveillance rather than face pretrial detention. “The second option was that house arrest replace custodial detention while the third reduced the period of pretrial detention to three months for misdemeanours, six months for felonies and one year for crimes that carry the death penalty or life imprisonment.”

In an interview with Extra News, human rights activist and member of the National Dialogue’s administration Ahmed Ragheb recommended that further discussion of the draft Criminal Procedures Law be postponed to allow time to forge a consensus.

“The parliamentary subcommittee’s amended articles on pretrial detention are not so different from the existing articles, suggesting the subcommittee systematically ignored changes proposed by the National Dialogue and the Press Syndicate,” he said.

Striking a more conciliatory note, Al-Balshi conceded that consultations with the Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee had led to the removal of Article 267 from the draft. The article had stated that court sessions cannot be broadcast or recorded in any way without written approval from the presiding judge and after consulting with the Public Prosecution.

“We hope further consultation will help reach common ground on pretrial detention articles,” said Al-Balshi.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 26 September, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly