The Egyptian Front for Human Rights (EFHR) condemns the proposal recently advanced by the executive authority to assign the selection and appointment of public prosecutors to the Military Academy, instead of the Judicial Inspection Authority and the competent judicial offices responsible for appointments. The EFHR also calls for an end to the executive dominance that has effectively been imposed on judicial appointments over the past three years, which requires judges to undergo training courses at the Military Academy as a condition for completing their appointments. Taken together, these measures move in the direction of undermining the independence and impartiality of the judiciary, thereby affecting public confidence in its integrity and in citizens’ access to justice and effective remedies.
As the announcement of the 2024 Public Prosecutors’ intake approaches, pending ratification by the President, the Presidency informed representatives of judicial bodies of its future decision to fully transfer matters of appointment and promotion to the Military Academy, replacing the Judicial Inspection Authority and the Prosecutor General’s Judicial Appointments Office. In response, the judicial community publicly objected through the Judges’ Club, declared a state of permanent session to address this grave challenge, and called for an emergency General Assembly on 6 February 2026 to confront what it described as a serious threat to the independence of the Egyptian judiciary.
The Presidency’s determination to assign an internal judicial function, such as appointments and promotions, to the Military Academy represents a continuation of the executive’s systematic dismantling of judicial independence, a process that began in 2015 to ensure alignment between the judiciary and executive political priorities. One of the earliest steps in this process occurred in 2017 with amendments to the Law on the Organization of the Judiciary, which restructured the relationship between the executive and judicial branches in favor of executive dominance. These amendments established a Supreme Judicial Council chaired by the President of the Republic and composed of the heads of judicial bodies, granting it authority over judicial appointments, promotions, and secondments, effectively rendering senior judges directly accountable to the President.
The amendments also altered the method of selecting the heads of judicial bodies, namely the State Council, the Administrative Prosecution Authority, the State Lawsuits Authority, and the Public Prosecution, by granting the President discretionary authority to select one candidate from a list proposed by each body, replacing the long-standing principle of absolute seniority. This change marginalized the role of judicial general assemblies, which traditionally conducted internal, merit-based selection processes. Notably, the amendments introduced no objective criteria governing presidential selection, effectively subjecting appointments to political loyalty and alignment with executive interests.
When members of judicial bodies challenged these amendments before the Supreme Constitutional Court for violating constitutional guarantees of judicial independence and impartiality, the executive moved to preempt judicial review by entrenching these arrangements constitutionally through the 2019 constitutional amendments. Article 185 now explicitly constitutionalizes presidential intervention in appointing heads of judicial bodies, requiring that decisions of the Supreme Judicial Council on appointments, secondments, and transfers be adopted by majority vote including the Council’s President/ the President of the Republic. The amendments also expanded presidential authority over the appointment of the President of the Supreme Constitutional Court (Article 195) and curtailed the jurisdiction of the State Council (Article 190), restricting its capacity to review executive acts, particularly following rulings that conflicted with executive positions on issues such as counterterrorism measures and the transfer of sovereignty over the islands of Tiran and Sanafir.
In 2023, the Prime Minister issued a decree obliging new judicial appointees, alongside other state officials, to undergo training courses at the Military Academy, including physical and athletic tests designed for military service, as well as curricula on fourth- and fifth-generation warfare. Despite judges’ objections, these requirements were later accepted under the assumption that they were merely supplementary. However, in January 2026, the executive informed judicial authorities of its intention to fully implement a policy transferring responsibility for judicial appointments, promotions, training, assessments, and interviews entirely to the Military Academy beginning in 2027, without any judicial oversight.
This anticipated appointment policy represents a continuation of the executive and military encroachment on the judiciary, already evident in the current contested intake, which reportedly includes 30% of candidates drawn from the families of senior military officials. The Supreme Judicial Council previously disclaimed responsibility for any alterations to appointment lists, signaling its lack of coordination with presidential directives, and reportedly sought to prevent retroactive application of the policy to earlier cohorts. Under the proposed system, the Military Academy would receive applications, conduct evaluations, and oversee mandatory training, while the Supreme Judicial Council’s authority over judicial appointments, and the Prosecutor General’s Appointments Office, would be eliminated.
The content of the proposed training programs raises serious questions about their relevance to judicial functions and constitutes an unlawful expansion of appointment conditions beyond those stipulated in the Judiciary Law. These additional requirements compound already restrictive conditions, including mandatory security clearance by the National Security Agency, an approval process governed by political and class-based considerations.
After days of media blackout and smear campaigns targeting judges’ demands, the Supreme Judicial Council announced a supposed breakthrough following negotiations with judges, the Judges’ Club, and the Presidency, leading to the suspension of the emergency General Assembly. The Council declared that appointment authority would remain within its remit, allegedly in line with the President’s direction as head of the Council, to “ensure judicial independence.”
The announcement of a breakthrough in this crisis and the reported success of judges’ negotiations in keeping the authority over appointments within the Supreme Judicial Council does not provide grounds for optimism. This is due to the fact that the Council remains formally chaired by the President, a reality that carries a strong likelihood of continued presidential interference in matters of judicial appointments and promotions, given the existing balance of power in his favor.
Moreover, this alleged breakthrough does not negate the reality of the current appointment policy, which requires newly appointed judges to successfully complete training courses at the Military Academy as a condition for the entry into force of their appointment decisions. Judges and graduates who fail to pass these courses are excluded or have their appointments postponed indefinitely.
Only days after the announcement of the crisis’s resolution, the President of the Republic stated his intention to move forward with subjecting judges to training at the Military Academy, in line with other state institutions, while emphasizing that the Military Academy applies “strict standards of selection and evaluation.” This statement signals a potential role for the Academy in selection and assessment processes, reopening the door to a future revival of this proposal.
The likelihood of this scenario is further reinforced by the outcome of negotiations between the judges and the presidency, which resulted in maintaining the status quo and deferring the issue to the future, with the intention of referring it to Parliament for discussion and approval.
Accordingly, the EFHR rejects this direction, despite its temporary suspension, and warns against any attempt to reintroduce it in the future. Such a move would undermine what remains of the independence and impartiality of the judiciary in Egypt and dismantle long-established judicial traditions whereby the judiciary manages its own affairs through judges’ clubs and the general assemblies of judicial bodies, mechanisms that have historically enabled the organic emergence and promotion of judicial leadership within the institution. It would also represent a departure from long-standing traditions governing judicial appointment and selection.
In this context, and in pursuit of restoring judicial independence and impartiality, the EFHR calls for a complete cessation of the Military Academy’s involvement in the appointment and training of judges, as well as the requirement imposed since 2023 that candidates complete Military Academy training as a condition for appointment. The EFHR further calls for reversing the recent trend toward excluding internal judicial institutions from the processes of selecting and training their own members.
The EFHR also urges the Egyptian Parliament to intervene by exercising its oversight tools, whether through debates, interpellations, briefing requests, or parliamentary questions, to examine the rationale behind such decisions and their implications for the independence and impartiality of the Egyptian judiciary, which affect all citizens. Additionally, the EFHR calls on Parliament to refrain from engaging in any future attempt to legally formalize the Military Academy’s responsibility for selecting and training judges through legislation that would serve this direction, particularly by exploiting the current parliament’s alignment with security agencies. This scenario was explicitly hinted at during negotiations between judges and the presidency as a means of containing judicial dissent by deferring the issue for future parliamentary consideration.
The EFHR calls on judges’ clubs to continue demanding the restoration of the judiciary’s authority over its own affairs and to sustain the activities that have, for decades, ensured the natural emergence of judicial leadership within the judicial institution.