In the past few months, Egyptian authorities have been promising to resolve the country’s pretrial detention crisis – referring to the widespread and prolonged use of pretrial detention without trial to silence individuals critical of the government. But in August, a parliamentary subcommittee began discussing a draft criminal procedure code that, if passed, will dismantle foundational due process protections – normalizing warrantless searches, eating away at the role of lawyers in their clients’ defense and criminalizing trial monitoring. In this article, Mai El-Sadany, Executive Director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP) and Steering Committee member of the World Movement for Democracy, analyzes the potential impacts of this draft law. “The current draft threatens to destroy a criminal justice system that is not only essential for Egypt’s human rights obligations but also deeply critical for security, stability, and economic progress in the country.”

Read Mai El-Sadany’s article here.