In a surprise move, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi refused to ratify the new Criminal Procedures Law this week, which was passed by the House of Representatives, the lower house of Egypt’s Parliament, on 29 April.
Instead, he decided to send the Law back to the House to address objections to several articles, according to Presidential Spokesman Mohamed Al-Shennawy. The move follows calls from multiple stakeholders, particularly human rights and civil society organisations, urging a review of the law’s provisions.
Al-Shennawy explained that the 544-article Law was submitted by the House of Representatives on 26 August, asking the president to ratify it in order that it could go into effect.
However, numerous appeals were made to the president to reconsider many of its provisions. “The articles in question relate to governance, clarity, and practicality — specifically ensuring greater protection for defendant rights, expanding alternatives to pre-trial detention, and removing ambiguous language that could cause conflicting interpretations, and allowing more time for ministries and relevant authorities to be able to implement the mechanisms and models introduced in the draft Law,” Al-Shennawy said.
After six months of back-and-forth discussion, the House finally approved the new law in April, laying out the framework for investigating, prosecuting, and trying criminal cases.
In his message to the House, President Al-Sisi drew MPs’ attention to the necessity of revising articles related to preventing defendants from travelling abroad and placing them on watch lists, giving financial compensation for pretrial detention in specific cases and reducing its duration, regulating remote trials through the use of information technology, and procedures for witness protection.
In a statement released on Sunday, the House said that MPs would reconvene on 1 October in the presence of Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli to look into the law again.
The House’s internal regulations stipulate that in the event of an objection from the president, the House shall hold an urgent session for this purpose and invite the prime minister to deliver a statement. The House will refer the Criminal Procedures Law to its General Committee to review the articles and make sure they observe human-rights safeguards and contribute to a comprehensive justice system that guarantees the rule of law and the protection of rights.
The statement described the decision to return the law to the House as reflecting Al-Sisi’s keenness to exercise his constitutional rights, his adherence to the rule of law, and his profound belief that the protection of rights and freedoms is not a gift, but rather a fundamental constitutional obligation.
According to Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mahmoud Fawzi, President Al-Sisi’s decision to send the Criminal Procedures Law back to the House is not the first of its kind. The right to object to laws passed by the House has been used twice by President Al-Sisi before, the first time regarding the Clinical Trials Law, and the second concerning the Criminal Procedures Law, Fawzi said, pointing out that the president’s message shows that several articles need scrutiny, especially those regulating pre-trial detention.
In its session on 1 October, the House, as the final decision-maker, will discuss the president’s request in two stages. The first will see the House’s General Committee meet to study the objections to the law, and if the objections are accepted, an ad hoc committee will be formed and headed by one of the Speaker’s two deputies to re-examine the Law in general and draft the final texts of the articles in question, Fawzi said.
The House’s General Committee is the backbone of the parliament as it is headed by the speaker and include its two deputies, the chairpersons of parliamentary committees, and the representatives of political parties, Fawzi explained.
Several opposition figures and human-rights activists used Al-Sisi’s move to accuse the House of Representatives of not taking sufficient care when discussing and passing laws.
“This is the second time that the president has intervened to save society from undemocratic and freedom-restricting laws,” said prominent human-rights activist Negad Al-Borai, pointing out that the president intervened in 2018 and asked the relevant authorities to return the NGOs Law to the House to amend it and to give greater rights and freedoms to form and establish NGOs.
Al-Borai said that last year the National Dialogue formed by President Al-Sisi had sent the House a host of recommendations on the draft Criminal Procedures Law after many of its articles had sparked widespread controversy among lawyers, journalists, judges and the National Dialogue’s Board of Trustees.
“But instead of discussing them, the speaker and MPs affiliated with the majority Mostaqbal Watan Party chose to ignore them,” Al-Borai said.
The Press Syndicate proposed that pretrial detention be revoked altogether in favour of alternatives such as electronic surveillance and house arrest, for example. The proposal was rejected by Mostaqbal Watan MPs and Justice Ministry consultants as “impractical”.
The syndicate, in a memorandum to Speaker Hanafi Gebali, also warned that the law gave sweeping powers to prosecutors to violate the private lives of citizens. Khaled Al-Balshi, chairman of the Press Syndicate, said the draft bill did not go far enough in restricting pretrial detention and that the “arbitrary use” of this kind of detention had led to dozens of journalists being held in custody for indefinite periods.
The National Dialogue’s Board of Trustees also submitted three amendments to Article 123 of the law. The first specified that defendants could be placed under electronic surveillance rather than face pretrial detention; the second proposed house arrest as an alternative to custodial detention; and 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.
But all of these proposed amendments were rejected by majority MPs and by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mahmoud Fawzi, while Justice Minister Adnan Al-Fangri claimed the final draft of Article 123 met the demands of civil society organisations on pretrial detention.
As a result, the final draft of Article 123 reduced the maximum period of pretrial detention for misdemeanours from six to four months, for felonies from 18 to 12 months, and for crimes that carry the death penalty or life imprisonment from 24 to 18 months.
Al-Borai also noted that the House ignored a memorandum submitted by the Press Syndicate on press freedoms when covering court trials.
He expressed the hope that parliament would “relieve everyone of embarrassment,” especially since it had caused problems and caused the president to reject the new law.
He suggested that the House leave the matter to the new parliament that will be elected next January in order that it can discuss objections carefully in a manner benefiting society and public freedoms.
Freddi Al-Biadi, an opposition MP affiliated with the leftist Egyptian Socialist Democratic Party, also took the House speaker, the ministers of parliamentary affairs and justice, and the pro-government Mostaqbal Watan Party to task for passing the Criminal Procedures Law at surprising speed and without sufficient care.
“We hope that this scenario will not be repeated and that the job of amending the Criminal Procedures Law will be left to the new parliament to discuss objections carefully after listening to all views,” he said.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 25 September, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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