On September 21, 2025, in a rare and unexpected move, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi used his power under the constitution to reject a deeply flawed draft Criminal Procedure Code. He returned it to Parliament to “review objections to a number of the draft law articles.”
For nearly a decade, consecutive parliaments under President Sisi have acted as a rubber stamp for government policies. Members should use this opportunity to substantially revise the bill.
Members should genuinely engage in transparent consultation with independent human rights groups, legal experts, and the lawyers’ syndicate to produce a draft law that is consistent with Egypt’s Constitution and its obligations under international human rights law. Human rights groups and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) have expressed their readiness to support the process.
Numerous independent Egyptian human rights groups, international organizations, UN experts, and the OHCHR, urged President Sisi to reject the catastrophic draft law. A Human Rights Watch analysis showed that it would undermine Egypt’s already weak fair trial rights protections and further empower abusive law enforcement officials.
Chief among the draft law’s flaws is that it fails to end the routine, unjustified use of pretrial detention, a hallmark of repression in Egypt, further normalizing its excessive use, while it should be an exception.
The proposed draft also included provisions codifying and broadening the use of videoconference for prosecutorial and judicial hearings. Remote hearings undermine fair trial guarantees and hinder judicial officials from assessing defendants’ wellbeing, leaving them more vulnerable to abuse, including abusive prison conditions.
The presidency’s statement rejecting the draft acknowledged some of these flaws. It mentioned, for example, the need to “achieve further guarantees for the sanctity of a person’s home and the rights of the accused before investigation and trial authorities. This also includes increasing alternatives to pre-trial detention to limit its use.”
If parliament seizes this moment, it can have ramifications that go far beyond the draft law. If Sisi’s refusal to ratify the flawed draft law is put correctly to use, it can represent a golden opportunity to begin to reverse Egypt’s protracted human rights crisis, the worst in decades.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Human Rights Watch (HRW).
