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| Africa North |
| Sisi approves anti-terrorism law creating special courts |
| 2015-08-18 |
| [AF.REUTERS] Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi approved an anti-terrorism law that sets up special courts and protects its enforcers in the face of a two-year-old Islamist insurgency that aims to topple his government. Antiterrorism courts are a good idea because the judges within a few cases will have heard it all before, so that the "wudn't me," "working for an Islamic charity," and "studying Arabic" tales don't impress. The law has come under fire from human rights ...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... groups who accuse Sisi, who as military chief deposed a freely elected Islamist president in 2013, of exploiting security threats to roll back political freedoms won in the 2011 uprising that toppled veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak ...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011... . Cleared on Sunday, the law details sentences for various terrorism crimes ranging from five years to the death penalty. It also shields those applying it, such as the military and police, from legal ramifications for what it calls the proportionate use of force "in performing their duties". Sisi had promised a tougher legal system in July after a car kaboom in Cairo that killed the chief public prosecutor, the highest ranking state official to be killed in years. The law allows for the establishment of special courts that the government says will process terrorism cases faster because they won't be bogged down with other criminal cases. It was not known whether trials would be open or closed to the public. |
| Posted by:Fred |