President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi decided on 21 September 2025 not to sign the proposed Code of Criminal Procedure and to return it to parliament for further consideration, following appeals against its adoption in its existing form.
A presidential statement said the objections concerned governance, clarity and practical implementation. It called for stronger safeguards for the inviolability of homes and defendants’ rights during investigations and trials, more alternatives to pretrial detention, and clearer wording to avoid conflicting interpretations.
The presidency also stressed the need to give ministries and other institutions sufficient time to put the proposed mechanisms into operation and understand their requirements, with the aim of delivering timely justice within the constitution and the law.
Egypt’s existing criminal procedure legislation dates back to 1950. Although repeatedly amended, it has continued to attract extensive criticism from rights advocates.
Political groups and human-rights organisations welcomed the decision as a partial victory for their demands to change controversial provisions. Others also saw a political dimension, given the approaching elections and growing criticism of restrictions on public freedoms.
The House of Representatives approved the bill in April 2025 after months of debate that began in August 2024. It proceeded despite calls for substantial amendments from civil-society organisations, political groups and the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate.
Egyptian and international rights organisations, the syndicate and numerous UN special rapporteurs criticised the draft. In May, the UN human-rights office urged the president to scrutinise it before approval to ensure compliance with Egypt’s international human-rights obligations.
Twenty Egyptian and international organisations subsequently welcomed his decision to return the bill to parliament. The campaign Towards a Fair Criminal Procedure Law, involving lawyers and the Civil Democratic Movement, had appealed for him to withhold approval, arguing that provisions conflicted with the constitution, undermined justice and infringed defence rights.
The House of Representatives announced an extraordinary sitting for 1 October. Its speaker invited Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly to explain the government’s position on the bill and the anticipated changes.
The planned proceedings include presenting the contested provisions and referring the president’s objections, together with the prime minister’s statement, to the General Committee for examination and a report to the plenary.
Article 27 of the House’s internal regulations allows the General Committee to invite the prime minister, other government members, heads of independent and oversight bodies, and others to provide information when necessary. It may also hear from an MP on an important or urgent matter, with invitations issued by the speaker on the committee’s decision.
Human-rights lawyer Ahmed Mokhtar of the Centre for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance tells Zawia3 that returning the bill was a “positive and realistic step”. In his view, it avoided a crisis that would have followed passage of provisions with constitutional and rights-related flaws affecting defence rights and the privacy of homes, potentially leading to constitutional challenges years later.
Mokhtar says the presidential objections focus on eight provisions, but the whole bill requires review. He argues that this opportunity should extend to more than 50 controversial articles for which rights organisations and legal initiatives had already proposed alternatives.
The opportunity should not be limited to the provisions challenged by the presidency: rights advocates want a comprehensive review of the bill’s underlying approach.
Mokhtar also criticises what he considers the absence of a gender perspective. He points to the lack of exemptions from pretrial detention for pregnant women and mandatory protection for witnesses and complainants in sexual-violence and harassment cases, despite civil-society proposals. He argues that ignoring recommendations from the president’s own National Dialogue contributed to the crisis.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), part of the coalition welcoming the decision, likewise says parliament has a rare opportunity to rethink the bill’s overall philosophy rather than make isolated changes.
In a 25 September position paper, EIPR argues that the problem goes beyond flawed individual articles. Despite some positive provisions, it sees a political and security approach that entrenches existing abuses and structural failures at the expense of litigants, especially criminal defendants.
The organisation proposes four guiding principles: separation of powers and institutional judicial oversight; equality of arms between prosecution and defence; the presumption of innocence and trial within a reasonable time; and restoring the distinction between the ordinary rule and exceptional restrictions.
A comprehensive review
The presidency received the bill from parliament on 26 August 2025 and returned it within the constitution’s 30-day window. Article 123 of the constitution gives the president the right to promulgate laws or object to them. A bill not returned within that period is deemed law and promulgated; parliament may override an objection by passing the returned bill again with a two-thirds majority.
Contemporary press accounts identified eight provisions as the focus of the objections. They included Article 48, concerning dangers that could justify entry into homes and the need for sufficiently precise wording to protect the home’s inviolability.
Article 105 concerned questioning defendants and safeguards for the presence of their lawyers, a contentious aspect of the balance between investigative procedures and defence rights.
The concerns about Article 112 involved setting a maximum period for holding a defendant when questioning could not proceed because a lawyer was absent. For Article 114, the proposed direction was to make more alternatives to pretrial detention available.
Article 123 concerned periodic review of continued pretrial detention every 90 days rather than a single review. For Article 231, the issue was retaining conventional service of judicial notices when electronic notification systems failed.
Article 411 concerned defendants’ or their lawyers’ attendance at appeal hearings and allowing another opportunity to appear after an absence. It did not concern restricting applications to reopen cases to the prosecutor general, as an earlier description in this article had suggested.
Ayman Abou El-Ela, head of the Reform and Development Party’s parliamentary bloc, tells Zawia3 that his party made substantive interventions on Article 411. The presence of a defendant or lawyer at appeal hearings is fundamental to a fair trial and constitutional rights, he says.
He sees the presidency’s objection as an opening to strengthen those guarantees, consistent with his party’s emphasis on human rights. Returning the bill, he adds, offers a chance to reconsider amendments advanced by both majority and opposition blocs and reach a balanced text serving justice and all parties.
Abou El-Ela says his party’s concerns extended beyond the eight provisions reported to be under challenge, reaching the bill’s overall philosophy. Parliamentary deliberations, he says, raised observations concerning more than 500 articles, making a serious, comprehensive dialogue essential before enactment.
Rethinking the bill’s foundations
Human-rights lawyer Mohamed El-Baqer tells Zawia3 that the decision implicitly recognises the merit of objections raised by civil society and legal experts over preceding months. The problem, he argues, is not confined to eight articles but lies in a legislative approach that restricts rights and freedoms instead of protecting them.
Rights advocates had already submitted substantial alternatives, El-Baqer says. These included a legal paper he helped prepare with experts including Negad El-Borai, Ahmed Ragheb and Khaled Ali, which the Journalists Syndicate endorsed, as well as a complete alternative draft developed by the campaign for a fair criminal procedure law. He says the legislature failed to take these initiatives sufficiently seriously.
El-Baqer calls for debate to be postponed until the next parliament, due to be elected in November 2025, warning that rushed, superficial amendments would reproduce the same crisis.
“The current law exists and is being applied. We do not need haste that repeats the same mistakes. We need a real public and legal discussion that makes the new law a charter for rights and freedoms, not merely cosmetic amendments.”
Lawyer Nada Saad El-Din, a participant in the Towards a Fair Criminal Procedure Law campaign, agrees that the bill’s foundations need reconsideration, particularly defence rights, fair-trial guarantees and technology in court proceedings. She argues that it grants expansive powers to prosecutors and judicial police at defendants’ expense.
She suggests one reason for the presidency’s objections may be the practical difficulty of implementing certain provisions, including remote trials by video. In her view, such arrangements conflict with the right to a lawyer alongside the defendant, especially when the defendant is detained or counsel has overlapping hearings.
Saad El-Din also urges against rushing enactment. Dialogue involving the Journalists Syndicate, the Bar Association, political parties and rights groups, she says, offers the best route to a fair and comprehensive text balancing security and justice.
With an extraordinary parliamentary sitting approaching and political and rights groups pressing for caution, the bill’s future remains open. Some interpret the president’s decision as a response to civil-society demands and recognition of constitutional and human-rights flaws. Yet concerns remain that the changes will be cosmetic, leaving the underlying legislative approach intact.
As parliamentary elections draw closer and debate over public freedoms intensifies, the coming sitting will test whether the state can enable meaningful legislative dialogue that places rights and justice at its centre.
