The Egyptian Front for Human Rights (EFHR) welcomes the decision of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to return the Criminal Procedure Code to the House of Representatives for amendments to some of its provisions. However, EFHR calls for the amendments and review process to extend to all the provisions of the law, which contain clear constitutional, legal, and human rights violations due to the overall philosophy of the law, a philosophy that has left its mark on all articles, not only the few mentioned.
On September 21, 2025, the president referred the Criminal Procedure Code back to the House of Representatives to reconsider objections to certain articles, after the law had been sent from parliament to the presidency for ratification on August 26, 2025. The presidential referral called for revisiting some provisions in order to safeguard the sanctity of homes, uphold defendants’ rights, ensure good governance of the law, and remove ambiguous or vague expressions.
Following this referral, the data shows that the review is limited to only eight articles of the draft law, namely: Article 114 (introducing further alternatives to pretrial detention), Article 48 (defining danger cases), Article 105 (which does not allow investigative authorities to question defendants without the presence of their lawyer even in urgent cases), Article 112 (setting a maximum period for detaining defendants if questioning is delayed due to the absence of a lawyer), Article 123 (requiring the Public Prosecutor to review the case of a detainee every 90 days), Article 231 (allowing traditional notification when electronic notification is disrupted), Article 411 (allowing appeals by convicted defendants even if neither they nor their lawyers are present), and the article on publication and entry into force of the law, which would now take effect from the beginning of the judicial year instead of the day after its publication, thus giving judicial and justice institutions time to prepare for its implementation.
While this step is important in attempting to address some of the serious flaws in the draft law, particularly concerning the sanctity of homes and defendants’ rights in trials, the amendments remain extremely limited and do not address the severe defects contained in the other provisions of the bill.
Out of more than 400 provisions, the review affects only eight, some of which focus merely on ensuring governance and coordination between state institutions (such as Article 231 and the article on the law’s entry into force). Even the review of the publication article simply reverts to the government’s original proposal and the Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s report, which had set the law’s entry into force in October, coinciding with the start of the judicial year.
By contrast, the presidential referral did not address other provisions that undermine fair trial guarantees, the rule of law, and citizens’ personal rights and freedoms. The draft law, as originally proposed, sought to shield public officials, law enforcement officers, and prosecutors from accountability for violations or crimes such as torture committed against defendants during their duties. It also stipulated that judicial procedures and trials would not be annulled even if law enforcement authorities violated defendants’ rights to notification or failed to present legal authorization for arrest or search. Moreover, the government’s draft law imposed restrictions on lawyers’ work, limiting their right to speak in court without prior authorization from the prosecution and confining them only to pleas and requests, restricting their access to investigation files at the prosecution’s discretion, and allowing for the criminal prosecution of lawyers if they caused “disturbance” in court sessions.
The draft law also curtailed fair trial guarantees by restricting public hearings, narrowing the categories of people allowed to attend trials without specifying those categories, and requiring written approval from the presiding judge to broadcast or publish trial proceedings. It further stipulated that law enforcement officers and prosecutors could not be challenged or disqualified by defendants during trials, while allowing the reverse.
Although the presidential referral called for creating alternatives to pretrial detention, the draft law had in fact introduced an additional ground for such detention: the vague notion of “serious disruption of public security and order.”
Some of the articles referred for review also raise concerns regarding the intended direction of amendments. For instance, Article 105 was criticized because it “did not grant investigative authorities the right to interrogate defendants without their lawyer in urgent cases,” suggesting that the amendment might weaken, rather than strengthen, safeguards.
For all these reasons, EFHR calls for a comprehensive review of the entire Criminal Procedure Code, not merely eight articles, so that the amendments will be meaningful and impactful. It is unlikely that revising these eight provisions alone will bring about any substantive change as claimed.
EFHR also urges that the review process include genuine dialogue and debate, engaging voices from civil society, professional associations such as lawyers, journalists, and unions, in order to avoid the secrecy that characterized the work of the government committees that drafted the bill in the first place. Those committees worked in complete isolation for over a year, without real public hearings or consultation with experts and stakeholders, while rejecting most proposed amendments that could have improved the law and better aligned it with constitutional principles of justice and Egypt’s international obligations.