Introduction

Introduction First Chapter Second Chapter Third Chapter Chapter Four

The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) issues on the day 9/10/2003 this report about arbitrary detention with the title:" political detention: closed door policy and criminal detention: revolving door policy".
This comes as part of the EOHR campaign to stop applying the emergency law which was applied in the country since 1981. Arbitrary detention - in its various forms-, especially authoritative detention- is considered one of the dangerous phenomena which represent the main the main threat to the right of freedom and personal safety. Also, arbitrary detention phenomenon is considered one of the most common violations not only because of the emergency state but because of the executive authority's arbitration in using the emergency law.
This is even a violation for the emergency law's text itself, i.e. an exception for the exception.

This report discusses in four chapters the arbitrary detention phenomenon, as follows:

The first chapter: tackles the issue of arbitrary detention and the emergency state from the prospective of the international standards concerned with human rights.
Meaning those cases were detention is considered arbitrary, and the rules that the countries have to follow when it is obliged to declare a state of emergency as an exceptional procedure.

The second chapter: Tackles the issue of arbitrary detention and the emergency law in Egyptian life.
This chapter unravels the fact that there are thousands of political detainees who can be called arbitrary detainees according to the emergency law which becoming more of a governing mechanism rather than an exceptional procedure. EOHR describes this kind of arbitrary detention as a closed-door policy.
As it became a rule that the emergency authority does not take into consideration any verdicts of releasing political detainees.
This chapter also includes criminal detention which EOHR describes as the revolving-
door policy where the detainee goes into a vicious circle of detention warrants, release, and then detention again and so forth.

The third chapter: Tackles the issues of other violations as a result of arbitrary detention, which the detainees are subject to in a regular way inside prisons and places of detention, the negative effects of detention on the detainees' families, especially women and children.
One of these effects is the deterioration of living conditions for the detainees' families and the emergence of the poor families' phenomenon that are supported by a single mother because women are obliged to work in the private sector, children dropping school, the children-labor phenomenon.

The fourth section: the EOHR introduces some suggestions, one of the main suggestions is asking for the abolishing of the emergency law, and applying the verdicts for the sake of the detainees and repaying them for the damages.
EOHR as it issues this report continues to unravel the dangerous effects of the on going application of the emergency law, which affects a lot of direct victims and their relatives.
It also reveals that the arbitrary detention is not a separate violation on its own.
But it is related to other violations like civil, political, economical and social. Also it affects the rights of women and children of the detainee's families.
So the EOHR hopes that this report will prompt the efforts to stop applying the emergency law and to regain the law order.
The EOHR has a list of the political and criminal detainees who have been found not guilty and in spite of that they have not been released (available for those interested).