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| Africa North | |
| Egypt plans blanket anti-terrorism law against 'disrupting order' | |
| 2014-11-27 | |
Authorities have cracked down hard on Islamist, secular and liberal opposition alike since the army toppled elected Islamist president Mohammed Mursi last year after mass unrest against his rule, dashing hopes for a more robust democracy stirred by the fall of longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak ...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011... in 2011. The government already has broad security powers and has been able to exercise them largely at will - jailing thousands of Mursi supporters and more recently many leading lights of the 2011 uprising - because of many Egyptians' weariness with lawlessness that crippled the economy after Mubarak's fall. The draft legislation, however, would help enshrine the security crackdown in the criminal code by permitting authorities to classify groups as "terrorist" according to a long list of offences, some of them non-violent. "A terrorist entity is considered any organization... which practices or seeks in any way to disrupt public order or exposes society's integrity, interests or security to harm," the draft legislation reads. Any group designated as terrorist would be dissolved, the draft stipulates. It also allows for the freezing of assets belonging to the designated group, its members and financiers. The government is already able to seize Brotherhood assets based on a specific court order; the new legal draft would ease such action against other groups. The proposal must be approved by a judicial advisory body before Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who as head of the armed forces ousted Mursi in July 2013 and was elected president in May this year, can sign it into law. | |
| Posted by:Fred |