CAIRO — An Egyptian court suspended Tuesday a government decision allowing military police and intelligence to arrest civilians, a setback for the country’s military rulers after the decree drew an outcry from opponents who accused them of trying to impose martial law.
The Justice Ministry issued a decree on June 13 that allowed military police and intelligence agents to arrest civilians for even minor offenses such as traffic violations. Rights activists feared that the new powers essentially reproduced the country’s emergency law, which had expired just two weeks earlier after more than 30 years in force. The emergency law granted broad powers of arrest and detention to police that were abused over the years and fed the popular anger that led to last year’s uprising.
Critics said the new powers of detention could extend the rule of the generals, even if they transfer power to the elected president by the end of this month as promised.
“This [court ruling] is the best possible way to have such a repressive law struck down,” said Heba Morayef, a researcher with Human Rights Watch in Egypt. “It is a pretty significant decision against a decree that would have permanently given the military this right of law enforcement and encroachment on civilian life.”
Military officials had said the new powers were only meant to fill a security vacuum resulting from the uprising when the police force collapsed and disappeared from the streets during the first days of mass protests.
The government, which was appointed by the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, can appeal the court decision.
The military has pledged to turn power over to a civilian government once a new president is named. On Sunday, Islamist Mohammed Morsi of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood was declared Egypt’s first freely elected president in modern history.
However, Morsi is facing a power struggle with the military rulers after they stripped the presidency of its major powers one week before the winner of the election was announced.
The ruling military council has used court decrees and constitutional declarations tostop Islamists from controlling all the executive and legislative branches.
The same court postponed a key decision on overturning the ruling military council’s order to disband the Islamistdominated parliament.
The Muslim Brotherhood and another Islamist group, the ultraconservative Salafis, won more than 70 percent of the parliament in a free election around the start of the year. The parliament, according to Egypt’s interim constitution, is tasked with forming a panel to write the constitution. Twice, liberals walked away from panels formed by the Islamist-controlled parliament, saying they are packed with Islamists and voicing fears that Egypt’s new constitution would end up more Islamic.
However, two days before the June 16-17 presidentialrunoff, the ruling council dissolved the parliament after a court determined that the parliamentary elections were illegal. As polls closed on June 17, the military issueda declaration of constitutional amendments that gave the ruling military legislative power and control over the process of drafting the constitution.
They also declared a new body, The National Defense Council, dominated by generals with a wide mandate to decide security, military and foreign affairs.
On Tuesday, Morsi also suffered a setback in his power struggle with the military. Attempts to reverse some of the military council’s decrees were stalled after the Cairo Administrative Court postponed a ruling to July 7 on the legality of dissolving the 498-member parliament.
In the absence of a parliament, Morsi must take his oath of office before the Constitutional Court, which was behind the ruling that recommended dissolving the Brotherhood-led parliament.
Morsi, according to his spokesman Yasser Ali, has been meeting with legal and constitutional experts to try to resolve the swearing in dilemma.
Also Tuesday, the administrative court postponed to Sept. 1 an appeal that sought to disband a 100-member panel appointed by the parliament to draft a new constitution. That left the panel and the constitution drafting process in limbo.
Meanwhile, Ahmed Shafiq, Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister and loser of the runoff, left Egypt on Tuesday with most of his family for the United Arab Emirates hours after the prosecutor general opened an investigation into allegations he wasted public funds during his eight-year term as a civil aviation minister in the ousted regime.
An airport official said Shafiq flew to Abu Dhabi at dawn with two of his threedaughters and three grandchildren. His campaign told the daily al-Masry al-Youm that he left for a short visit and he will return after doing a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. The campaign said he was planning to start a new political party.
The United Arab Emirates has offered a haven to other members of Mubarak’s old regime.
YEMEN
Land mines planted by al-Qaida militants before they fled key southern Yemen strongholds have killed 73 civilians over the past week, Yemeni officials said Tuesday.
Engineering teams have removed about 3,000 landmines around Zinjibar and Jaar, according to the governor’s office in Abyan province.
Government troops captured both towns in a twomonth offensive to uproot al-Qaida fighters from large swaths of land they captured during last year’s political turmoil.
BAHRAIN
Bahrain said Tuesday that three police officers on trial over killing demonstrators during street protests last year will now face murder charges and could face the death penalty.
The defendants, who were not named, include a police lieutenant, according to a statement by the Gulf nation’sInformation Affairs Authority. They were originally being tried on the lesser charge of manslaughter.
TUNISIA
Opposition parties staged a walk out from Tunisia’s assembly Tuesday to protest the extradition to Libya of Moammar Gadhafi’s last prime minister.
The fierce debate in the parliament is the latest repercussion over the extradition of Al-Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi, which has caused deep divisions in the North African country’s government.
Information for this article was contributed by Maggie Michael, Ahmed al-Haj, Reem Khalifa and Paul Schemm of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 7 on 06/27/2012