Egypt: Supreme Court Postpones The Baha'i Case Again

Cairo: the Egyptian Supreme Administrative Court convened today, 16 September 2006, to hear the Government's appeal of the lower Administrative Court's ruling which granted the Baha'is their rights to document their religion in all official government documents. Because the Government was unable to produce its report on this matter which was initially requested by the Court, the judges (shown in the photograph) decided--for the third time--to postpone the case, and scheduled to reconvene the court on 20 November 2006 to hear the case. Another case concerning the Baha'is and of similar importance will be heard by the same court on 20 September 2006.


Meanwhile, the Government will present its annual accountability report and plans for future policies to the convention of the ruling National Democratic Party scheduled for 19-21 September 2006. The theme for the convention is: "New thinking and a second leap towards the future." A wide range of issues will be discussed and worked on, including citizen's civil rights as well as democracy. The convention will close with a speech by President Hosni Mubarak. This was published in today's edition of al-Ahram newspaper linked here. (Sorry, the Arabic link for the 16 September issue is now unavailable)

The following was reported in the current issue of al-Ahram's English website regarding the proposed reforms:

"As has been the case for the past few years, Gamal Mubarak -- President Hosni Mubarak's 43-year-old son and the head of the party's powerful Policies Committee -- will be playing a leading role at the conference. In fact, he is in charge of forging the party's new political platform. On the conference's first and second day, he will lead two debates about "democracy and citizenship", discussions that will be based on an NDP report on "democracy and citizenship rights" that party insiders said has been updated from its original, highly theoretical version that was prepared for the party's first annual conference in 2003. That draft spoke in rather general terms about the importance of promoting a culture of democracy, modernisation, religious tolerance, moderation and legislative reform. The revised version supposedly delves into much more detail about the number of constitutional amendments required to turn President Mubarak's 2005 re-election campaign's political reform programme into reality."