Egypt’s House of Representatives recently approved delaying the entry into force of Criminal Procedure Law No. 174 of 2025 until October 1, 2027, instead of October 1, 2026. The decision came in response to the government’s statement that some of the organizational, technical, and staffing requirements for implementing the law have not yet been met.
Whatever practical reasons lie behind the postponement, the extra year offers an opening that should not be spent simply waiting for preparations to be completed. We now have a new window before the law takes effect, one in which we can revisit questions that did not get the debate they deserved while the law was being drafted and passed, and consider legislative changes broader than the limited amendments introduced after the president’s objection.
In our study, Procedure as Power: A Structural Reading of Egypt’s Criminal Procedure Law, which took nearly a year to produce, we tried to move from reading the law’s articles one by one to analyzing the structure that holds them together. That structure determines how authority is divided among law enforcement, the Public Prosecution, the judiciary, and the defense, and it directly affects people’s liberty and rights at every stage of a criminal case.
One of the study’s main findings was that a number of problems cannot be fixed by amending a single article. Their effects are bound up with other provisions that either complement them or reopen the very space the first amendment sought to narrow. That became clear in the handling of the president’s objection: the amendments targeted specific provisions, while parts of the procedural framework that produced the problems were left as they were.
For that reason, we believe the discussion that should begin now is not only about how to equip courts and prosecution offices to apply the law. It is about how to prepare the law itself, so that it is more consistent with fair trial guarantees and better able to balance society’s interest in combating crime with individuals’ rights to liberty, security, and protection from arbitrary state action.
What Should This Review Cover?
We need to reconsider how powers are distributed at the opening stage of a criminal case, specifically the powers of apprehension, arrest, search, and preliminary evidence-gathering.
The start of a criminal case is the moment that defines the relationship between the individual and the state. Any expansion of law enforcement powers, or of the circumstances in which the state may intrude on personal liberty and the inviolability of the home, shapes every stage that follows.
Amendments should therefore define more precisely what constitutes sufficient evidence and reasonable grounds to justify measures that restrict liberty. They should also provide an exhaustive list of circumstances in which arrest or search may take place without prior judicial authorization, and make those exceptions subject to requirements of necessity, proportionality, and effective judicial oversight.
It is also important to review the expansion of the category of officials who hold judicial police powers. Such powers should be tied to clearly defined duties, with rules for accountability, oversight, and documentation. The executive’s authority should not expand at the start of a case without an effective system for verifying that its actions are lawful.
Closely related is the right of anyone arrested to contact a lawyer and family members from the first moments of detention, along with documentation of interrogations and precise safeguards for any situation in which questioning may proceed without a lawyer present. Clear rules should also require the exclusion of evidence obtained through violations of fundamental safeguards, so that respect for rights does not depend on discretion alone.
The Public Prosecution and the Separation of Investigation from Prosecution
One of the central issues our study examined is the shift of a large share of procedural authority to the Public Prosecution. In many instances, it is the body that directs the process, gathers and assesses evidence, and makes decisions that shape the fate of a case.
This calls for rethinking the line between investigative and prosecutorial authority, and the role an investigating judge could play as an independent judicial safeguard, rather than as an exceptional mechanism used only in narrow circumstances.
What is needed is a system that provides meaningful judicial oversight of the procedures that most affect liberty and rights, and that prevents broad powers from concentrating in one body during the stages when the account of the alleged crime takes shape, evidence is gathered, and the direction of the prosecution is set.
The review should therefore cover the provisions that give prosecutors wide powers, as well as the rules on assigning investigating judges, the limits of each authority’s involvement in the other’s work, and the safeguards that keep investigative decisions independent of the decision to prosecute.
The Right to Defense and to Contest Evidence from the Start of an Investigation
The guarantees of defense need to be rebuilt from the earliest stage of an investigation. A fair trial is not secured by letting the accused present a defense in court at the end of the process. The ability to defend oneself takes shape from the moment evidence begins to be gathered and charges begin to form.
That means reviewing the rules on lawyers’ presence during investigations and interrogations, their right to examine case files and obtain copies, their right to attend procedures that affect their clients’ legal position, and their right to raise observations, requests, and objections concerning those procedures.
Any restriction the Public Prosecution places on a lawyer’s attendance or access to investigation records should be narrowly defined, justified, and subject to judicial review. Such restrictions should remain specific exceptions, not broad discretionary powers that can undermine the defense’s ability to follow an investigation from its beginning.
The review should also address provisions that allow certain information to be withheld from the defense or disclosure to be delayed, the rules redefining parties’ attendance and notification, and the legal consequences of electronic notification. A genuine opportunity to contest evidence requires actual knowledge of a procedure and a fair chance to prepare and respond. A notice that meets formal technical requirements is not enough if it ultimately deprives a party of the opportunity to present a defense.
Pretrial Detention and Restrictions Before a Verdict
This is among the areas that most need serious review. Depriving someone of liberty before conviction goes to the heart of the presumption of innocence, and as detention periods stretch and renewals pile up, it can become a de facto punishment imposed before judgment.
Pretrial detention should be regulated as an exceptional measure, used only when necessary. The grounds for it should be precisely defined, each tied to serious, specific facts of the case, and the investigating authority should be required to give reasons detailed enough to allow judicial review.
Time limits should be clear and proportionate, and continued detention should face genuine periodic judicial review, with the investigating authority bearing the burden of showing that the grounds still hold. Wherever an alternative can serve the purpose, alternatives should be the starting point for procedural decision-making, not merely an additional list of measures subject to the same discretion that governs detention orders.
The review should not stop at increasing the number of alternatives to pretrial detention. It should also examine their nature, the conditions for using them, the authority that orders them, the oversight of their continued application, and how well they fit the person’s circumstances and the facts of the case.
The same applies to financial and personal restrictions imposed before judgment, such as asset freezes, bans on disposing of property, bail, and measures that can place long-term burdens on defendants and their families. These can become punishments imposed before conviction unless they are tied to a specific necessity, clear time limits, and judicial review that ensures proportionality between the measure and its purpose.
The right to compensation for unjustified pretrial detention also needs to be strengthened. Compensation should cover the actual harm suffered, rather than becoming a narrow entitlement governed by procedural conditions or specific grounds for acquittal that exclude other cases deserving redress.
Protecting Witnesses Without Undermining the Defense
Protecting witnesses and those who report crimes is a legitimate necessity, particularly in cases involving a real threat to their lives or safety. But that protection must be regulated in a way that does not hollow out the right to a defense.
The provisions on concealing identities, keeping identifying information confidential, and hearing witnesses remotely should be reviewed, with strict conditions for their use: only where the threat is serious and specific, and only after a reasoned judicial decision that balances protection against the rights of the defense.
The defense must retain a meaningful ability to question the substance of testimony and test its credibility, and judicial safeguards should offset any limits placed on direct confrontation. The exception must not become the rule, and confidentiality must not become a way of producing evidence the accused cannot challenge on equal terms.
Here too, witness protection provisions should not be treated as a separate set. They have to be reviewed together with the rules on access to case files, the hearing of testimony, the conduct of investigations and trials, and how the court evaluates the evidence.
Conducting Trials and Keeping Hearings Open
An open trial is more than having an audience in the courtroom. It is a safeguard that allows society to scrutinize the administration of justice and ensures that evidence and accusations are examined within a properly regulated and open judicial process.
The powers governing the conduct of hearings, the limits on barring attendance or restricting public access, and the penalties that may be imposed in court should therefore be tightly defined, so that managing a trial does not become a way of restricting discussion or limiting the defense’s ability to present its arguments.
The rules on recording hearings also need to be improved, including audio or video recording where the nature of the case allows, and an accurate record of what happens in court. That would make proceedings subject to review and prevent the account of what took place from resting on abbreviated minutes that do not necessarily capture the substance of the exchanges.
The rules that allow some cases to be concluded through orders or procedural mechanisms without adequate oral argument should also be reviewed, with a guarantee that the accused can object and obtain a genuine trial before a court whenever that is needed to protect their rights.
Digital Justice and Remote Proceedings
The government cites completing the digital system as a leading reason for the delay, which opens an important discussion about the nature of the technological shift the law entails.
This is not merely administrative modernization or swapping paper for screens. Digital procedures reorganize how people attend proceedings, receive notices, access files, communicate, and submit evidence, and they can directly affect the ability of the accused and their lawyers to participate meaningfully in investigations and trials.
Any framework for remote proceedings should therefore rest on clear safeguards: the accused’s right to request physical attendance when the nature of the proceeding requires it; confidential and effective communication with counsel; full access to evidence and documents; verification of participants’ identities and the integrity of the connection; and protection of defense rights from technical failures, poor connectivity, or lack of suitable equipment.
Digital notice should not be presumed to have been received merely because it was sent to an email address or other registered means of contact. There must be adequate safeguards to establish that it actually arrived and could be accessed.
There must also be clear rules for system outages and dropped connections, so that these never cause a person to miss an appeal deadline, lead to the accused being treated as absent, or result in any other adverse procedural consequence.
Above all, technology must remain a means of serving justice, not a criterion for who can access it and who bears its costs. The review must take account of differences in people’s ability to use digital tools and must not pass the cost of modernizing the system on to litigants through new fees and charges that make access to justice more difficult for those with fewer resources.
The Financial and Social Cost of Criminal Proceedings
Bail, fees, fines, the cost of obtaining copies of documents and serving notices, and the financial restrictions that can be imposed before a conviction all need review. When the price of justice becomes a barrier to exercising rights, the system treats people differently according to their means.
The review should include safeguards so that being unable to pay a sum of money does not restrict a person’s liberty or shut them out of a procedural path open to others. Financial measures should take account of people’s economic and social circumstances, with effective ways to challenge decisions that impose such burdens.
The system of penal orders, settlements, and alternative procedures for concluding cases should also be reconsidered, so that procedural speed does not become a means of pressuring the accused into accepting a settlement or a financial penalty without fully understanding the consequences, or without a real chance to go to trial.
How Should the Review Be Carried Out?
These issues are interconnected, so they cannot be handled through scattered amendments that improve the wording of some articles and leave the rest of the system untouched.
What is needed is a comprehensive legislative review of the Criminal Procedure Law, based on a clear map of overlapping provisions and an assessment of how each amendment would affect related provisions, so that fixing one article does not leave a contradiction in another or create a new problem somewhere else.
It is important that this review take place through an open institutional dialogue involving judges, prosecutors, lawyers, the Bar Association, legal researchers, and civil society organizations working on justice and human rights. Proposed amendments and the reasons for them should be published, with enough time for discussion, and comparative experience should be drawn on without importing it mechanically or detaching it from the Egyptian context.
The review must also distinguish between two complementary tracks: completing the institutional and technical infrastructure needed to apply the law, and reviewing its legislative substance and safeguards. Completing the preparations is necessary, but it does not settle the questions about the distribution of power, defense rights, personal liberty, and judicial oversight.
The new date should not become another race to close the debate before October 2027. What matters most is a law that has been tested, reviewed, and debated for its effects, not just a system that is ready to enforce provisions that never received adequate scrutiny.
A Year That Should Not Be Wasted
In the end, this is not about defending the old law or rejecting everything the new one brought. The need to modernize the Criminal Procedure Law is real, and some of the changes it contains deserve discussion and further development. But genuine modernization must be measured by its ability to strengthen the safeguards of justice, place effective limits on state powers, and provide meaningful protection for individual rights at every stage of a case.
The experience of drafting and passing the law, followed by the president’s objection, the subsequent amendments, and the postponement of its entry into force, has shown that legislative reform does not happen just because a new law is enacted, and that addressing some of the points the objection raised is not enough if the structure that produces the imbalances remains in place.
We now have an additional year. The question that should occupy us during it is not only whether courts and prosecution offices are ready to apply the law, but whether we have managed to make the law itself more just before it takes effect.
That is the opportunity we must not waste. It is also a responsibility that falls on legislators, judicial and professional institutions, human rights organizations, and everyone who cares that criminal procedure serves as a safeguard for liberty and justice, not merely a tool for administering criminal cases.
The full study, “Procedure as Power,” is available here:Link to study
