CAIRO: The Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional and Legislative Affairs of the People's Assembly, headed by Judge Mahmoud Khudairi, approved during its session held on Monday an amendment to provisions of the Code of Military Justice, abolishing Article VI, which used to grant the president the authority to refer civilians to military courts. This, if approved, would strip future Egyptian presidents of the power to refer civilians to military tribunals. Article II of the Act stipulates that the military prosecution can refer its claims to the Attorney General, even if the jurisdiction belongs to other courts, while this doesn't apply to cases pending before military tribunals remain competent until the issuance of a final judgment. The MPs of the Committee lashed out against the military tribunals trying civilians and stressed that these courts do not issue judiciary rulings, as its judges issue sentences under the orders of their leaders, in which these sentences are considered non-existent, void and corrupt, issued under a flawed law, as this judiciary derived Its legitimacy from the tyrant regime of the ousted president Hosni Mubarak, according to the MPs. The issue of civilians being tried before military courts has long been a point of contention for the Egyptian public, and one which was an open sore during Mubarak's regime. The trials were seen as an extension of the dreaded ‘Emergency Law', which kept Egypt in a perpetual state of martial law. The fact that civilians were still being referred to military courts after the ouster of Mubarak, while Mubarak himself enjoyed a civil trial, was seen as a slap in the face to the revolutionaries responsible for maintaining the energy of the uprising of 2011. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/dK4t6 Tags: Civilians, Egypt, Military Trials, Parliament Section: Egypt, Human Rights, Latest News
