The ACIJLP Calls upon Egyptian authorities To take into account the guarantees of fair and equitable trial And to enable lawyers to perform their profession and to attend the investigations

 Cairo, 3^rd September 2013

 

The ACIJLP Calls upon Egyptian authorities

To take into account the guarantees of fair and equitable trial

And to enable lawyers to perform their profession and to attend the investigations

 

The Arab Center for Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession (ACIJLP) Calls upon Egyptian authorities to take into account the guarantees of fair and equitable trial in all stages of criminal proceedings in order to entrench the conditions of justice and the protection of human rights

The ACIJLP expresses its concern regarding the presence of many of the cases in which the ACIJLP received complaints from the families of the detainees on the occasion of the events taking place in Egypt at this time. Those persons exist by chance in these events and they are detained for successive periods, without deciding on the correctness or incorrectness of the charges attributed to them. The seriousness of these cases aggravated, particularly due to preventing lawyers from attending investigations, and the presence of many of the difficulties faced by lawyers to attend these investigations in case of enabling them to attend investigations.

The ACIJLP also points out the existence of cases of women and children who are being held and periods of detention are extended until trial at frequent intervals, with the lack of sufficient justification for the preventive detention.

The ACIJLP believes that the guarantees of fair and equitable trial include all stages of the proceedings, according to many of the relevant covenants and commitments, in particular the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, in articles nine and fourteen which indicates that guarantees of a fair trial and equitable are not only for prosecuting the person before its natural judge in a public trial, guaranteed to him all rights of the defense, and the right to appeal to a higher court, but it starts from the moment of the arrest of wanted persons or defendants, and held them in inappropriate places and they should not be detained in isolation from the outside world to contact their families and those who defend them, and bring them promptly  to investigations and in secret by dependent and impartial tribunal to decide on the charges against them or to be released immediately  till the trial and the end of the appeal against the sentences.

The ACIJLP calls upon the concerned judicial authorities, especially the public prosecutor of Egypt to take the necessary measures and procedures to enable the lawyers to perform their duties and to attend investigations conducted by the public prosecutor with the detainees, and to enable detainees to contact their families or those who defend them, with putting into consideration the promptness of brining the defendants before a judicial authority without undue delay  to entrench the rules of justice and the protection of human rights and respect for the international  commitments of Egypt.