Cairo: 18 August 2019
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) released, today, a position paper on the Ministry of Interior refraining from transferring defendants and suspects to courts, prosecutions and hospitals, in spite of the necessity to hold their trial and detention renewal sessions or the need to receive treatment and health care, under the guise of security reasons or justifications, a phenomenon that has been implemented by the Ministry of Interior under no legal ground making it a new step to trample on the law in Egypt.
The paper, entitled ” We apologize: We won’t respect the law today…About the phenomenon of security pretexts and lawlessness in Egypt”, shows that the Ministry of Interior has refrained from transferring defendants to the headquarters of the prosecution, courts or hospitals under the pretext of having a security issue that would prevent it from doing so. However, due to lack of accountability, it has greatly expanded its use of security excuses as a justification for not transferring defendants from their different places of detention to the place where their hearings were convened- whether prosecution offices or courts with their different degrees or to hospitals for treatment- making it become a phenomenon rather than a habit or a matter of routine. Such a matter echoes the protraction of pretrial detention exceeding its legal period stipulated in the law, the prevalence of solitary confinement, and the arbitrariness in providing health care and treatment in prisons.
The paper involves many examples provided by ANHRI to the Public Prosecutor and the Supreme Judicial Council, in addition to public opinion in Egypt, in an attempt to find anyone who can put an end to such new phenomenon, which has turned the Interior Ministry from an apparatus that enforces law to an apparatus that tramples on the law in light of another more dangerous phenomenon; which is impunity and lack of accountability.
You can check the paper through the following link:
