Hundreds of the country's prosecutors and judges converged on the downtown Cairo headquarters of the Judges Club on Monday for an emergency meeting to resolve the crisis on the appointment of Egyptian Prosecutor-General Talaat Abdallah. Attendees at the meeting, headed by club chairman judge Ahmed Al-Zend, reviewed developments and the efforts made by leading judicial figures to end the crisis, which had erupted because of the way that Abdallah had been appointed, leading to accusations of executive interference in the judiciary's affairs. Parallel to this meeting, Justice Minister Ahmed Mekki conducted another meeting with a delegation of the heads of judges clubs in the different governorates. The meeting coincided with the end of a grace period, which Mekki had asked for as a way of finding a resolution to the crisis. At the end of the Mekki meeting, it was agreed that the issue should be referred to the Supreme Judiciary Council (SJC) for a final say. “We agreed that the head of the Menoufiya Judges Club, Abdel-Sattar Imam, along with a board member of the Cairo Judges Club, would meet with members of the SJC in order to solve the problem. Whatever the SJC decides, everyone, including me, will abide by it,” Mekki said. The SJC, including Abdallah, is scheduled to meet soon. “No one can predict what will happen during the meeting,” Mekki said. Mekki agreed with the heads of the governorates' Judges Clubs on the need to de-escalate the crisis between the judicial and executive authorities. “This is a step towards ending the problem,” he added. Imam told the press that a delegation including judge Mahmoud Al-Sherif and representing the Judges Club and Imam would meet with members of the SJC in the presence of Mekki. “The meeting will aim to activate provisions in the new constitution regarding the process of choosing the prosecutor-general, and it will present a new candidate for the post to the president. We trust the SJC's capability to solve the current problem and to select a new prosecutor-general,” Imam said. Fathi Abdallah, deputy chairman of the Judges Club, said that the crisis was still ongoing. “Talaat Abdallah does not want to give up his post, and Mekki is not in favour of the prosecutor's-general resignation,” he said. During Al-Zend's meeting with the judges and prosecutors, he requested that a judge should be assigned to examine the resignation previously submitted by Abdallah, which had later been rescinded. “We, the prosecutors and the people, have a right to know whether the resignation was submitted under pressure, as the prosecutor-general claims, or not,” Al-Zend said. At the same time, he wondered about the reasons behind keeping Abdallah's resignation letter in Mekki's office without approving it or sending it to the SJC. Al-Zend said that if the problem was not solved in a way that would preserve the dignity and prestige of Egypt's judges and prosecutors, he would conduct another emergency meeting attended by more than 10,000 judges. “We have exerted all peaceful efforts to solve this problem, and they have not found a solution. This situation must end as soon as possible,” he said. Prosecutors filed a case before the administrative judiciary last week, asking for presidential decree no 376/2012, which appointed Abdallah prosecutor-general, to be nullified. According to the prosecutors, Abdallah was appointed according to a null and void constitutional declaration. The presidential constitutional declaration issued on 22 November dismissed the former prosecutor-general from his post and appointed Abdallah. Judge Mohamed Abdel-Hadi, spokesman of the Judges and Prosecutors Coalition, said that prosecutors had collected more than 3,000 signatures calling upon Abdallah to quit. “These signatures constitute 80 per cent of all prosecutors,” he said. Abdel-Hadi also denied that there had been any reconciliation between the prosecutors and the prosecutor-general. “These are just rumours. The prosecutors are insisting on their stance and will never change it. We are defending the independence of the judiciary,” he said. He objected to calls to forget the past and for a new beginning. “How can we as judges and prosecutors, the representative of the justice system, accept to work with a prosecutor-general who has been illegally appointed,” he asked. Prosecutors are objecting to the interference of Mekki and his “deactivation” of Abdallah's previous resignation. “We want the SJC to suggest nominees for the prosecutor-general's post. Nominating just one candidate is not acceptable,” Abdel-Hadi said. The prosecutors decided to form a committee representing the judges and prosecutors to follow up on the situation.
