Sources: Sisi is targeting opponents in Egypt’s judiciary

Egyptian judicial sources said that there is a state of tension in the various judicial circles because President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi did not approve promotions that would result in pay rises for a large number of judges.

The sources confirmed that “Al-Sisi refused to adopt the promotions approved by the Supreme Judicial Council due to his objections to a number of those included in the lists.” The president has called for individuals to be excluded before he will give the list the green light. The council considers Al-Sisi’s behaviour as interference in its affairs.

“As a result of the non-adoption of the decision… all those promoted to higher positions would exercise the functions of these positions without obtaining the financial dues allocated for them. Even some of the appeal judges who were promoted to judges of cassation still write the merits of the cases and then they are signed by former judges of cassation, and they receive their salaries and dues from the courts of appeal and not from the Court of Cassation.”

The sources pointed out that this intransigence has continued for more than two years, according to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

“It seems that someone has instructed Al-Sisi that the time has come to start a justice battle to end the last body which threatens him,” the sources continued.

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They explained that “what is happening could only mean this. Al-Sisi’s insistence on neglecting the movement of promotions, and the exclusion of bodies and persons from the movement after its adoption by the Judicial Council, as well as the cancellation of many of the fixed financial allowances of the judges, and the subsequent constitutional amendments that violated and undermined the independence of the judiciary, imply that it is now the judges’ turn after Al-Sisi subjected the rest of the state institutions and emptied them of opponents.”