On April 23rd, the Administrative Court decided to cancel the negative decision to refrain from erasing and removing the names of: Yara Refaat Muhammad Salam, Mustafa Muhammad Ibrahim, Fikriya Muhammad, Muhammad Saeed Al-Sayed Al-Bealy from the criminal records of the Ministry of Interior computer, related to Heliopolis Misdemeanor Case No. 8429/2014, appealed by East Cairo appeal case no.  17178/2014 (Etihadiya case).

EIPR had filed urgent appeals No. 17093/76 and 19372/76 before the First Circuit, requesting that the criminal information of their clients be lifted from the criminal records of the Ministry of Interior computer, to restore their legal status, due to the passage of more than six years since the issuance of the pardon decision No. 386/2015 and its publication in the Official Gazette No. 38 bis (b) on September 23rd, 2015, which includes a comprehensive pardon for them.

The criminal registration card, or the criminal information network, is an information card for the defendant, in which is written the personal name, the name of the mother, family name, criminal record, degree of danger and physical characteristics, with the purpose of identifying dangerous registrants.

Security authorities use the criminal card to monitor the movements of criminals to prevent occurrence of crime, with no consideration of preventing harm to society or infringing on the freedoms of individuals, whose court cases, including their charges, have been closed, who have been acquitted, who have been sentenced and have served their sentence, or a decision has been issued to pardon them. Therefore, the court decided that respecting freedoms places a restriction on security services which list those who threaten public security in the so-called criminal information card. According to the court’s decision, this entails taking into account the continuous updating of the registered data and following them up with concerned authorities (the Public Prosecution and the Criminal Court) to monitor orders issued by them including closure of cases, acquittal, or rehabilitation, in addition to enforcing the rules of legal rehabilitation.

Criminal registration is a precautionary measure carried out by the administrative body, whose effect should not extend to undermining the rights and freedoms of individuals and using it as a means to abuse them. The legal rehabilitation, which is automatically decided by the passage of a certain period specified by law, ensures that previously convicted individuals enjoy all their civil and political rights, such as the right to run for office and the right to vote.

Therefore, EIPR calls on the concerned authorities to implement the provisions of the law and to remove and delete the names and criminal information of all convicted persons from the computer records of the Ministry of Interior whenever the conditions stipulated in the Code of Criminal Procedure are met and that this be carried out automatically and without the person concerned having to resort to the judiciary to issue a ruling on the matter, in order to facilitate matters for citizens and to reduce the number of circulating court cases, which exhaust the judicial facility.