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DRAFT JOINT PRESS RELEASE / FIDH/EOHR/HRAAP
Human Rights Record of Egypt examined by the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights
5/ 2005
Cairo-Paris, 3 May 2005: The African Commission on Human and People's Rights (ACHPR) which is currently meeting in Banjul (The Gambia) will review Egypt's third State report. That report is supposed to present the measures adopted by the Egyptian authorities to give effect to the rights guaranteed by the main regional human rights instrument in Africa, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights.
On that occasion, the FIDH publishes a report on the death penalty in Egypt in order to draw the attention of the African Commission on the violations of international and regional standards taking place in that framework. The report is the result of an international fact-finding mission which was conducted in November 2004 in Egypt.
The report notably points to the great number of crimes which entail the death penalty in Egypt and to the fact that civilians may be tried by military courts, sentenced to death and executed without delay, in violation of the rights of the defence and sometimes in abstentia. The only remedy is the unlikely pardon of the President of the Republic. Confessions obtained under duress are often accepted in court and form the basis of the sentence.
The FIDH report recommends to the Egyptian authorities to put an immediate end to the state of emergency which, after 23 years, is no longer justified in Egypt today; the state of emergency is conducive to serious violations of human rights, including administrative detention without any effective judicial control, unfair trials of civilians before military courts, and widespread torture of detainees, including during the pre-trial stage. The Egyptian authorities should inquire into all allegations of torture and bring to justice those responsible.
The FIDH, the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) and the Human Rights Association for the Assistance of Prisoners (HRAAP) call upon the African Commission to recommend that the Egyptian authorities conform to its 1999 resolution, which urged all States parties that still maintain the death penalty to consider establishing a moratorium on executions of death penalty as a first step towards abolition.
FIDH, EOHR and HRAAP also urge the African Commission to make public such recommendations.
The full text of the report can be found on the following links: www.fidh.org
www.eohr.org
Contact:
FIDH (331) 43 55 25 18
EOHR (202) 363 68 11
HRAAP (202) 302 82 19
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