| Justice for Human Rights Organization (JHR)

Wednesday, September 30, 2026

Egypt: Postponement of the New Criminal Procedure Law’s Implementation… A Stark Dereliction of Justice and Continued Suffering for Detainees

In a shocking and abrupt move, the Egyptian House of Representatives convened an emergency session this morning, Wednesday, September 30, 2026, based on a proposal submitted by the government to postpone the implementation of the new Criminal Procedure Law for a full year, on the pretext of “insufficient technical readiness.”

This decision comes just one day before the law was scheduled to take effect on October 1, 2026, shattering the hopes of thousands of families who had been awaiting a resolution to the pretrial detention crisis and relief from the unjust punishments faced by their relatives inside prisons.

At JHR, we express our strong condemnation of this postponement, which we regard as a form of obstructing the course of justice, undermining hard-won human rights gains, and unjustifiably prolonging the suffering of detainees.

Technical pretexts cannot justify depriving citizens of their fundamental rights and the freedoms that would end the tragedy of prolonged pretrial detention.

Is it fitting for a state to discover a technical obstacle preventing implementation only hours before the law is due to take effect?

We view this reason and this pretext as flimsy — both on their surface and underneath, each worse than the other — and see no explanation for suspending the law’s application other than a continued policy of suppressing freedoms. This leads us to say that the Egyptian government has taken prisoners as captives and hostages under a false legal pretext. This is the crime of arbitrary detention, being committed in a systematic and widespread manner, and reflects the policy of a dictatorial regime that respects neither the law nor international covenants and conventions.

At JHR, we demand the immediate release of all those who have exceeded the legal limit for pretrial detention — especially those who have spent thirteen years without a fair trial — as well as the swift release of all those who have completed their custodial sentences, and an end to the policy of case rotation and re-charging in politically motivated cases.

#Freedom_for_the_detainees_in_Egyptian_prisons.