Extension of Egypt's emergency law dents reform process, say activists

Cairo: Extension of the emergency law for two more years dealt a hard blow to hopes for reforms, said Egyptian pro-democracy activists.

"The extension is yet another step, which proves that the regime has no real intention to respond to calls for political reforms," Mohammad Habeeb, deputy chief of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, told Gulf News.

Egyptian Parliament on Sunday approved the extension after Prime Minister Ahmad Nadeef said the law, in force since 1981, would be invoked to protect national security. Nadeef told the legislature, where the ruling National Democratic Party wields a majority, that an anti-terror law would be in shape by 2008.

"The reasons cited by the government to maintain this law are invalid and flimsy," said Habeeb. "For 26 years, this law has failed to prevent a series of bombings in Egypt. The Brotherhood has, meanwhile, been the target of massive and recurrent detentions, though they are not terrorists. This proves that the law is used for other purposes than the declared ones."

The Emergency Law gives police sweeping powers to detain people without charges.

Opposition newspaper Al Ahrar on Monday had a headline screaming 'A black day for democracy'. Extending the Emergency Law came as no surprise to Abdul Halim Qandil, an outspoken critic of President Hosni Mubarak.

"The justifications made to extend the law are based on giving the impression that the nation's security is in peril," he told Gulf News. "The renewal surprised only those who have illusions about the possibility of reforms in Egypt." Qandil, spokesman for protest group Kefaya, expects large-scale detention of opponents after renewal of the law.

"I think that these moves are setting the scene in Egypt for handing power to Jamal Mubarak," he said, referring to Mubarak's son.

Both Mubarak and his 43-year-old son have repeatedly denied Jamal is being groomed to succeed his father. "Laxity of police is to blame for these blasts," Jamal Tag Eddin Hassan, a member of the Egyptian Bar Association, told a massive rally in Cairo referring to triple blasts at Dahab. Actor-cum-activist Abdul Aziz Makyoun told the same rally that the law stifled creativity.