Egypt extends state of emergency by two years

Parliament passed the law after a brief debate following a decision by President Hosni Mubarak to extend the state of emergency from June 1, a parliamentary official said.

The state of emergency was imposed in 1981 after the assassination by Islamists of president Anwar Sadat and has been repeatedly renewed since then despite protests from rights groups and regime opponents.

Last year Judicial and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mufid Shehab said the state of emergency would end in 2008, even if the new anti-terror law meant to replace it was not ready.

"The state of emergency has for decades been one of the main causes of human rights violations in Egypt," Hafez Abu Sada of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) told AFP.

"This is anti-constitutional. The state of emergency is by definition put in place when the country is going though a period of danger such as a war or a natural disaster, which is not the case" now, he said.

Egypt`s authorities have used the state of emergency to clamp down on political opponents, including the country`s largest opposition movement, the banned Muslim Brotherhood, whose members sit in parliament as independents.

"We reject the extension of the state of emergency because there is no constitutional justification," Brotherhood political bureau member Essam al-Aryan told AFP.

"We have been living under a state of emergency ever since Mubarak came to power. It`s been part of our daily life since the assassination of Sadat despite the fact it`s an emergency law."

He said ...