Somaya Selim[1]

Egypt has faced serious terrorist violence, giving counter-terrorism a legitimate place within the state’s sovereign responsibility to protect its population. In response, the enactment of the Counter-Terrorism Law (Law No. 94 of 2015) and the Terrorist Entities Law (Law No. 8 of 2015) restructured the country’s national security architecture. While international and domestic legal debate routinely scrutinizes the linguistic breadth of these statutes, focusing primarily on the scope of criminalized conduct, this emphasis obscures a deeper institutional reality. The critical legal question is no longer simply who may be prosecuted as a terrorist, but rather what the justice system becomes empowered to do once the terrorism framework is invoked. A terrorism classification operates as a powerful legal gateway. It fundamentally alters an individual’s procedural trajectory, modifies the mechanisms of pretrial detention, shifts the dynamics of judicial review, and ultimately tests the practical boundaries of access to justice long before guilt or innocence is finally adjudicated.

When a Definition Becomes a Gateway

The foundational architecture of Egypt’s current security framework relies on Law No. 94 of 2015 and Law No. 8 of 2015. Both statutes employ broad formulations concerning terrorist acts, entities and persons that have drawn significant attention. Law No. 94, for example, extends the purposes associated with a terrorist act to concepts such as disturbing public order, harming national unity, social peace and national security—terms whose breadth has itself drawn concern from the UN Human Rights Committee.

United Nations human rights mechanisms and independent legal organizations have repeatedly raised concerns regarding the precision and foreseeability of these provisions, including their reported application to peaceful political and civic activity.

Here, “terrorism classification” is used analytically to describe the terrorism- or national-security-related legal characterizations through which an individual may enter this specialized procedural pathway, rather than a single formal act of designation. However, the profound significance of this statutory ambiguity lies less in the substantive expansion of liability than in its procedural consequences. Characterizing conduct as terrorism can serve as a jurisdictional and institutional gateway. Once an investigation is classified as involving terrorism or national security, it will typically fall within the remit of the Supreme State Security Prosecution, a specialized branch of the Egyptian Public Prosecution with jurisdiction over serious national-security and terrorism-related offences.

If a case proceeds to trial on terrorism-related charges, it is heard before specialized terrorism circuits within the ordinary criminal court system. These are not structurally separate exceptional or military tribunals, but rather specialized chambers established within the ordinary criminal courts system, designated specifically to adjudicate terrorism-related charges. Entry into this specialized pathway profoundly affects the defendant’s relationship with the state’s coercive apparatus. The terrorism classification activates distinct procedural mechanisms regarding the duration of pretrial custody and the nature of judicial oversight. Consequently, the initial legal characterization dictates the institutional balance of power between the investigating authority and the defendant, reconfiguring the legal environment in which the presumption of innocence is practically exercised and defended.

What Happens Before Guilt Is Decided?

The most immediate consequence of the terrorism gateway is the transformation of pretrial detention from an exceptional investigative measure into a prolonged status. Within the specialized terrorism circuits, judicial review of detention frequently yields routine renewals rather than substantive scrutiny of the necessity of confinement. For example, in its monitoring of two terrorism circuits during 2025, the Egyptian Front for Human Rights recorded 21,802 detention-renewal decisions across 2,206 State Security cases and no release order issued by either of the two monitored circuits. The importance of the figure is not numerical alone; it compels a re-evaluation of how access to justice is conceptualized and raises a more basic question: what does access to judicial review mean when the mechanism used to review detention so rarely alters it? Where review repeatedly leaves detention unchanged without providing a meaningful opportunity to test its continuing necessity and evidentiary basis, the availability of a hearing alone does not necessarily amount to effective access to justice.

The procedural environment within this specialized pathway can further constrain defendants’ ability to contest their detention and the allegations against them. Legal monitoring of terrorism-circuit proceedings has identified recurring restrictions on effective defense participation, including difficulties accessing case files and materials necessary to prepare the defense. During pretrial-detention renewal hearings, lawyers have also faced restrictions on their ability to communicate effectively with clients and fully present arguments challenging continued detention, concerns also raised by UN Special Procedures in relation to remote detention-renewal proceedings. At the trial stage, monitors have documented judicial restrictions on defense questioning of prosecution witnesses. Taken together, these constraints can reduce the defendant’s practical ability to challenge both the evidentiary basis of the terrorism allegation and the necessity of continued detention, creating a significant gap between formal participation in proceedings and the practical capacity to challenge the exercise of coercive power.

These concerns also engage Egypt’s obligations under Articles 9 and 14 of the ICCPR, which protect liberty and security of person and guarantee fundamental fair-trial rights. The complexities of exiting this procedural pathway are most acutely illustrated by the practice commonly referred to as tadweer, or case recycling. Egyptian human rights organizations and UN mechanisms have documented instances where individuals ordered released from pretrial detention are subsequently attached to new investigations—often involving identical or closely related national security allegations—thereby initiating a new cycle of detention.

The legal significance of tadweer extends beyond the mere prolongation of custody. It fundamentally interrogates the concept of legal exit: if a judicial order concluding detention can be immediately superseded by re-entry into the same coercive framework under a new case number, the realism of judicial review as a mechanism to terminate state coercion is severely compromised.

Furthermore, the implications of a terrorism classification can extend beyond physical confinement. Under the Terrorist Entities Law, the Prosecutor General may request the listing of individuals or entities before the competent criminal circuit without requiring a final criminal conviction. Listing decisions are subject to judicial challenge, including appeal before the Court of Cassation, yet once issued they can carry significant legal consequences, including travel restrictions and asset freezes. The significance of these measures lies not in the absence of legal review, but in the fact that substantial restrictions may arise before criminal guilt has been finally determined. In this sense, the legal effects of terrorism extend beyond the conventional conviction–acquittal binary.

When Exception Becomes Governance

The Egyptian counter-terrorism framework illustrates how statutory definitions function as active instruments of governance. A criminal classification determines far more than ultimate legal liability; it dictates the precise institutional architecture through which public power is deployed against an individual. When an elastic legal category such as terrorism can shift investigative authority, dictate the parameters of pretrial liberty, and impose continuing civil disabilities, the statutory definition itself becomes a structural mechanism of governance. It distributes power decisively in favor of the investigating authority.

This legal architecture necessitates a strict analytical distinction between the mere existence of a legal procedure and the substantive realization of access to justice. The Egyptian procedural context demonstrates that a defendant may possess nominal access to legal counsel and formal standing before a judge, yet remain practically devoid of the institutional leverage required to alter the trajectory of their detention. Meaningful access to justice requires more than a formal opportunity to be heard. It requires a realistic capacity to challenge, modify, or bring an end to the coercive measure affecting the individual.

Recognizing this dynamic does not negate the state’s legitimate sovereign responsibility to prevent and respond to terrorism. Security authority is essential. However, to remain compatible with the rule of law, exceptional coercive powers must remain strictly bounded, substantively reviewable, and practically reversible. When procedural design renders judicial review mechanical and legal exit elusive, sovereign power risks transitioning into a permanent system of exceptional administration.

The recent enactment of the new Criminal Procedure Law (Law No. 174 of 2025), scheduled to take effect in October 2026, presents a critical forward-looking test. The law has been officially presented as a comprehensive reform designed to strengthen constitutional guarantees and rationalize pretrial detention. Yet, the true measure of this overhaul will not lie solely in its application to routine offenses. The more difficult test will be whether the new safeguards meaningfully alter the experience of individuals whose cases enter the justice system through counter-terrorism classifications.

Conclusion

Precision in counter-terrorism law matters for reasons extending beyond the traditional principle of legality. When a terrorism classification can alter the procedural route through detention, prosecution, judicial review and continuing restrictions before guilt is finally determined, the boundaries of that classification become a question of governance as well as criminal law. Egypt’s forthcoming criminal procedure reforms offer an important test of whether procedural safeguards can meaningfully reach this legal pathway. The question is no longer only who may be prosecuted as a terrorist, but what the legal system is permitted to do once terrorism is invoked.

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[1] Somaya Selim is an Egyptian human rights lawyer and researcher focusing on governance, sovereignty, access to justice, and peoples’ rights in the MENA region. Contact: soselim@protonmail.com