Egypt’s president wants military appeals court
Wed 28 Mar 2007, 12:41 GMTCAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has proposed a law to set up an appeals court for suspects tried before military tribunals, known for their tough and swift verdicts, a cabinet statement said on Wednesday.
Mubarak has sent the draft bill to both houses of parliament, dominated by his ruling National Democratic Party. Under the present law, only the president can reverse verdicts of a military court.
“This will provide more guarantees for those transferred to the military judiciary,” the statement said. It did not say how judges will be selected for the new court.
Could this be a response to the criticisms about Article 179? If so, it’s a pretty limited one.
On the other end of Egypt’s judiciary system, the economic cabinet wants to create special commercial courts, so that business men don’t have to wait five years for their cases to come to an end.
As elsewhere, the approach is not to reform the system, but to create parallel structures to bypass the mess in some areas. Certainly not to the benefit of the ordinary Egyptian who still have to deal with ordinary courts, and in this case not to the benefit of political prisoners being sent to military courts which are now receiving just a dash of legimitization. It’s window-dressing, isn’t it.
Would an appeals process really allay concerns about military courts? Adding a layer seems like an acknowledgement that military courts are part of the system, here to stay, can’t be considered exceptional any more, etc etc.
I don’t think you place a commercial courts system under the same criticism as that of the military courts. A parallel commercial court system is actually a very good thing in terms of attratcing FDI and generally for commerce in the country. That is not to say that the civil and criminal courts of the land don’t need reform: they are in dire need of reform, but this commercial courts system would presumably free up resources in other parts of the system.
With regards to the idea of a military appeals court, the court would be redundant really unless it was presided over by say the judges of Egypt’s highest appeals court for instance or if the judiciary was actually truly independent. I suspect that its use will be really in the cases where the government has changed its mind about a particular decision or has buckled under outside pressure and will use the appeals court as a way to enact this without actually having to come out and publicly reverse the decision. It can simply say that our independent, wonderful appeals court has decided such and we can’t possibly intervene.
I did not intend to place commercial and military courts under the same criticism. I just wanted to highlight that the same method is used at different levels.
Commercial courts are a good idea, no doubt; the efficiency of the legal framework is obviously a key criteria for foreign investors.
But once foreign investors and the own business elite are satisfied with a better system, I don’t see why the government would have the motivation to then move on to reform the rest of the system.
The existence of an appellate court, by itself, is meaningless. As long as the appellate court isn’t independent, it just adds another rubber stamp. At most, such courts function as safety valves that the government can use to “correct” judgments that have become too burdensome or embarrassing.