President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi enacted a new counterterrorism law that increases authorities’ power to

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi enacted a new counterterrorism law that increases authorities’ power to impose heavy sentences, including the death penalty, for crimes under a definition of terrorism that is so broadly worded it could encompass civil disobedience, potentially criminalizing even private expressions of opposition to the government.
The government had sped up the passage of the law after the assassination of Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat on 29 June 2015, in a Cairo car bombing.
The new law also gives prosecutors greater power to detain suspects without judicial review and order wide-ranging and potentially indefinite surveillance of terrorist suspects without a court order.
The law makes it a crime to publish or promote news about terrorism if it contradicts the Defense Ministry’s official statements and would allow the courts to temporarily ban journalists from practicing their profession for doing so. It also makes anyone judged to have facilitated, incited, or agreed to a vaguely defined terrorist crime – whether in public or in private – liable for the same penalty that they would receive if they had committed that crime, even if the crime does not occur. The law eliminates any time limit for bringing terrorism prosecutions.
The new Law 95 of 2015 for Confronting Terrorism largely maintains the overbroad definition of terrorism in Egypt’s penal code. Under this definition, a “terrorist act” encompasses any “use of force or violence or threat or terrorizing” that aims, among other things, to: Disrupt general order or endanger the safety, interests or security of society; harm individual liberties or rights; harm national unity, peace, security, the environment or buildings or property; prevent or hinder public authorities, judicial bodies, government facilities, and others from carrying out all or part of their work and activity.
Such a framework far exceeds a definition of terrorism that the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted in 2004 and that the UN special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights subsequently endorsed. That definition says that terrorism is an act committed with the intent to kill, cause serious bodily injury, or take hostages with the aim of intimidating or terrorizing a population or compelling a government or international organization.
Egypt’s new counterterrorism law also runs counter to a basic principle in international human rights law that requires laws to be precisely drafted and understandable as a safeguard against their arbitrary use and so that people know what actions constitute a crime.
The new counterterrorism law will affect any person or group designated under Egypt’s Terrorist Entities Law, issued in February 2015, which created a procedure for courts to approve prosecutors’ nominations of individuals or groups as officially designated terrorists. Egyptian human rights groups have strongly criticized the Terrorist Entities Law, protesting that it uses vague and mysterious terminology – such as “public order,” “endangers national unity” and “social peace” – that opens the door for the possible oppression of opposition voices and civil society.
The counterterrorism law punishes a dozen different acts with the death penalty, making it the mandatory punishment for anyone convicted of funding a terrorist group or terrorist act. Other crimes that can incur the death penalty if they result in death include manufacturing weapons; damaging a gas, water, or electricity network; or compelling another person to join or remain in a terrorist group. The law does not require that the death be intentional. Under international law, even countries that maintain the death penalty have to restrict its application to the most serious crimes.