- EGYPT
- April 21, 2015
- 4 minutes read
Independence of the Judiciary Front Denounces Verdict Against President Morsi
The anti-coup Independence of the Judiciary Front (IJF) in Egypt regrets the clearly flawed court ruling against the elected President Mohamed Morsi and 14 others Tuesday in the Itehadia Palace case. IJF stresses several points regarding today’s verdict:
First: The Court did not mention the inadmissibility of considering this case – right from the outset – due to the fact that it was filed in a way contrary to that charted by the law on impeachment of the President.
Second: The defendants’ innocence of murder is accurate as pronounced by the court, yet the public prosecutor was not instructed to investigate the killings documented in the case and to bring the killers to trial.
Third: The court punished the defendants in accordance with provisions that do not exist in law, which have long since been declared unconstitutional, i.e. Article 375 bis of the Penal Code, issued by Legislative Decree No. 10 for the year 2011 after it was ruled unconstitutional in a hearing on May 6, 2006 in Case No. 83 judicial "constitutional". This Article was not presented to the Parliament as stipulated in Articles 108 and 147 of the Egyptian Constitution in effect at the time and Article 156 of the Constitution written by the coup regime in 2014. Hence, the article does not exist in the penal code as it stands today.
Fourth: The Court did not mention the period during which the President was held without legal justification, a crime punishable by law, which guarantees the invalidity of all the actions and proceedings that followed the arrest incident.
IJF calls on all lawyers and law professionals around the world to save the Egyptian people, who can no longer trust the judiciary or the public prosecution service, and are poised to take the law into their own hands – which would inevitably lead to a situation of uncontrollable chaos.
God save Egypt and its people
Cairo: Tuesday – April 21, 2015